Now this, is serious:
A bloodless attack shattering the gold dome of one of the four holiest Shiite shrines brings Iraq to the brink of civil war. US president George Bush appeals for calm
February 22, 2006, 12:08 AM (GMT+02:00)
More than 97 Sunni mosques were attacked and a dozen or more Sunnis killed by vengeful Shiites across the country, as word spread of the destruction of the famous dome that capped the 1,200 Askariya shrine in Samarra, where the last of the Shiite imams, Mohammed al-Mahdi, known as the “hidden imam” and his son are buried. The shrine draws millions of pilgrims from around the Shiite world. Wednesday, Feb. 22, millions of outraged protesters marched and fought in all of Iraq’s Shiite centers.
Some 500 soldiers were sent to Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhoods in an unsuccessful effort to prevent Shiite-Sunni clashes. In Basra, Shiite protesters traded rifle and rocket-propelled grenade fire with Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party guards, then set fire to a Sunni shrine. Police found 11 bodies of Sunni Muslims shot dead in the southern city.
Senior Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, earlier ordered 7 days of mourning. But the appeal to his flock to refrain from retribution against Sunnis went unheeded.
DEBKAfile’s sources: The bombing was carried out by a small squad trained by Abu Musab al Zarqawi especially for the operation. Four-to-six men entered the Askariya mosque Tuesday night and placed explosive charges around the interior of the gold dome so as to bring it crashing down on the sacred tombs below.
Samarra police have made 10 arrests, among them foreigners, as would be typical of al Qaeda.
Iraqi leaders and US officials realize that, unless the furious Shiite-Sunni clashes which erupted Wednesday are quelled, Iraq will quickly descend into sectarian warfare with US forces stranded between the warring camps. This eruption will sunder the country into three warring entities – Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish. The current effort by their politicians to form a national unity government will be relegated to the past.
Such a conflict will resonate across the region. Shortly after the disaster in Samarra, Iran’s spiritual leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, in contrast to the US president’s effort to calm the flames, accused “US forces and Israeli intelligence” of responsibility.
The Islamic republic is quite willing to exploit the destruction of a Shiite shrine to fuel the fire of sectarian conflict, in the hope of expediting the US forces’ exit from Iraq. The thousands of Iranian agents operating clandestinely in Iraq can be expected to aggravate civil strife in Iraq by agitation and leading attacks on Sunnis.
Iranian leaders are proving once again how willing they are to sacrifice fellow-Shiites to terror for the sake of the strategic interests which they share with al Qaeda.
Some Shiite leaders blamed the United States for not protecting their shrine and are demanding a bigger security role for religious militias. But voices were also raised in an attempt to pull the country back from the brink: US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad warned the bombings were a deliberate provocation to foment sectarian tension and civil war. Key Sunni groups condemned the destruction of the Shiite mosque’s dome. The Sunni clerical association of Muslim Scholars called the bombing a criminal act. |
