March 3, 2004
Ashoura in Iraq
David Warren
How are the Americans to persuade the Shia leadership in Iraq that they must fight the same enemy? The people who blew up the Shia Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad at the end of the Ashoura festival (which commemorates the assassination of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson in a 7th-century power struggle), are the same who have been attacking American convoys, and secular Iraqi police stations. But the Shia leadership of Grand Ayatollah Sistani is currently positioning itself for power, after the Americans leave. It refuses to cooperate openly with the U.S. and allied military, or other Iraqi groups, and then blames them for every disaster. It refuses to take responsibility for anything, until it has total power.
The problem with the Ashoura festival itself, which could be held openly this year thanks to the Bush administration, is that it presented a security nightmare that any half-brained terrorist could exploit. And the four suicide bombers who stationed themselves around the packed Imam Musa al-Khadam shrine in Baghdad, and who were almost certainly affiliated with Al Qaeda, knew what they were doing. There were two at the gates for openers, then one inside for the people running in, then one outside for the people running out. Then, grenades were thrown into the terrified crowds from the window of a small hotel.
Shia pilgrims were arriving in considerable numbers from Iran, Pakistan, the Gulf States, and Saudi Arabia, as well as from other parts of Iraq. Huge numbers of strangers were collected in the streets around the shrines in Karbala and in Baghdad's Khadamiya district: it was impossible to number them, let alone guess which ones were wired. The Israelis can't even stop suicide bombers under everyday conditions.
Unfortunately, in the midst of this carnage, Ayatollah Sistani decided to play more games. His spokesmen excited tensions further by blaming the U.S. for the attacks -- emotionally, if not coherently. They claimed U.S. troops knew the bombers were coming, and did nothing to stop them. And since the Americans seem to have superhuman capacities in other respects (they got rid of Saddam, which Iraqis could not do), they must therefore have wanted the attacks to happen.
Now, that is the kind of half-brick that travels in the conditions of contemporary Iraq; in a society which has, through many generations of powerlessness, been accustomed to entertaining conspiracy theories to explain all surprising events. It is why the crowds at the sites of both bombings hurled rocks at U.S. troops, even as they arrived to help rescue the bomb victims. But thanks to previous anti-American harangues in the mosques, they would also have thrown rocks had U.S. attempts to provide security been more visible.
You can't win an argument against paranoia: and once it has got its claws into a whole society, that society must either disintegrate, or be held together by raw tyranny. So the question of post-Saddam Iraq is really, "Can these people govern themselves?" Or must we instead acknowledge that, given contemporary realities, only a murderous tyrant like Saddam Hussein can rule? There are two schools of thought, as ever: optimistic, and pessimistic. The Bush administration remains optimistic, the Iraqis themselves are increasingly pessimistic, and my own luxurious position from this safe distance is that I don't know.
The "Islamists", or "jihadists", of both Shia and Sunni persuasion, need self-government in Iraq to fail: their own future depends on it. Their position is that any tyranny is better than none, but in the long run Allah stipulates an Islamic tyranny. While only a tiny proportion of Iraqi citizens could possibly wish such a government upon themselves, the majority cannot resist without courageous leadership. But who will provide that?
On the optimistic side, the Iraqi Governing Council was able to agree, Monday, to a new constitution that also appears acceptable to the U.S., Britain, and the U.N. The signing of it was delayed, for better or worse, to the end of the Ashoura festival, and now will perhaps be further delayed for a period of mourning. While the new constitution is just words on paper, it is at least something objective that could be given force, and therefore a good thing.
Iraq remains, after the fall of Saddam, the most promising opportunity for responsible government in the region. If the experiment quickly fails, the Bush administration could be toast. But worse, the hope that a responsible government can be established anywhere in the Arab world will be lost for another generation.
David Warren |
