Violent Cycle of Revenge Stuns Iraqis
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 23 — After a day of violence so raw and so personal, Iraqis woke on Thursday morning to a tense new world in which, it seemed, anything was possible.
The violence on Wednesday was the closest Iraq had come to civil war, and Iraqis were stunned. In Al Amin, a neighborhood in southeast Baghdad, a Shiite man said he had watched gunmen set a house on fire. It was identified as the residence of Sunni Arab militants, said the man, Abu Abbas, though no one seemed to know for sure who they were.
"We all were shocked," said Abu Abbas, a vegetable seller, standing near crates of oranges and tomatoes. "We saw it burning. We called the fire department. We didn't know how to behave. Chaos was everywhere."
Of the seven men inside, at least three were brought out dead, said Abu Abbas, 32, who said it would be dangerous to give more than his Iraqi nickname.
Everything felt different on Thursday morning. A Shiite newspaper, Al Bayyna al Jadidah, used unusually angry language in a front-page editorial: "It's time to declare war against anyone who tries to conspire against us, who slaughters us every day. It is time to go to the streets and fight those outlaws."
Many Iraqis, including Abu Abbas, blamed the militia loyal to the Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, for the attacks. The fighters are known as the Mahdi Army but they are little more than large groups of poor Shiites with guns. Indeed, the neighborhoods in eastern Baghdad on the edges of the vast Shiite slum, Sadr City, where most of those fighters live, seem to have been hit the hardest.
The fighters are not organized, but are a powerful force: they fought two uprisings against the American military at the command of the strongly anti-American Mr. Sadr.
It was shortly after noon on Wednesday when truckloads of gunmen identified as Mahdi fighters drove into Al Shabab, a mixed neighborhood near Sadr City, and mounted an attack on Ibad Al Rahman, a Sunni mosque.
Ahmed al-Samarai, who lives in front of the mosque, said he saw about seven cars full of men wearing black, the signature Mahdi dress, fire machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades at the mosque, gouging a large hole in a side wall.
They entered the building and led away a man who performs the call to prayer, Abu Abdullah, telling his wife and three children to leave the building, Mr. Samarai said. They returned later, poured gasoline in the mosque, and set it on fire. Neighbors are still looking for Mr. Abdullah.
Sahera Ibrahim, a 60-year-old homemaker who lives nearby, recounted an angry exchange with one of the Shiite attackers, who seemed to hold her entire Sunni sect responsible for the destruction of the Shiite shrine at Samarra, where a bombing on Wednesday set off the violence.
"I told one of them, 'You do not have the fear of God — how could you attack this house of God?' " she recalled. "He answered me, 'Did you not have the fear when you attacked the shrine of the imam?' "
Still, the neighborhood itself did not divide along sectarian lines: Shiite residents also condemned Wednesday's assaults. Neighborhoods all over Baghdad reported similar camaraderie.
"As a Shiite, I do not accept this," said Saadiya Salim, a 50-year-old homemaker. "These acts will lead to violence, because the Sunnis will attack" Shiite mosques.
As the afternoon dragged on and law enforcers were nowhere to be seen, neighborhoods seemed to shrink into themselves, setting up makeshift roadblocks out of the trunks of palm trees and, pieces of castaway metal stoves.
It was behind such a barricade that a frightened group of Sunni men took refuge, blocking off the entrance to their mosque, Malik bin Anas, in Al Moalimin district. Men with machine guns stood on the roof, their faces wrapped in scarves.
The scent of burned plaster hung heavily in the air. The mosque's interior had been ignited shortly before 3 p.m., and the men, who were worshipers, said they had spent the late afternoon dragging out damaged carpets and furniture.
"We were watching our own house burn, so you can imagine our feeling," said one man, Abu Yusef.
"They burned our beliefs," said another, who spoke in English.
A third held out a cellphone with a short video of smoke billowing from the mosque. "It's obvious the Shia people feel safer here," he said of the neighborhood. He said neighborhood Shiites helped put out the fire.
The men said a police commando vehicle was parked near the mosque and did nothing, echoing a frequently repeated complaint.
Many Shiites condemned Wednesday's violence, while at the same time acknowledging that their sect had been responsible for it. Most said they had heeded the advice of their religious leaders, who all called for restraint in a flurry of statements on Wednesday.
In some cases, that advice came too late, or was simply ignored. One Mahdi fighter, Ahmed Saheb, said in an interview on Wednesday that he had been summoned to Mr. Sadr's main office in Sadr City in the morning to await orders, but that none ever came.
"People attacked Sunni mosques because they were angry," said Mr. Saheb, who said he had not taken part in the attacks. "We couldn't control them, they were doing it on their own."
A demonstration moved slowly along Sadr City's main boulevards on Thursday. Men and boys, many holding guns, real and toy, waved green flags and portraits of Shiite saints. Many said they planned to go to Samarra on Friday to help protect the shrine.
"We cut the hands of those who try to twist Shiite hands around," the crowd chanted.
All the pain and anger of the past three years seemed to burst to the surface in the bombing of the Samarra shrine, said one marcher, Abbas Allawi Metheb, an employee in the Trade Ministry. It was as if the Shiites' heart had been torn out.
"You have a TV, you follow the news," he said. "Who is most often killed? Whose mosques are exploded? Whose society was destroyed?"
Shiites are fed up, and heeded their leaders' calls for restraint only grudgingly. The anger, he said, is simmering. "Maybe this is just the beginning."
"If they have 100 people, we have millions," Mr. Metheb added, motioning to the wide stream of demonstrators. "Look at these people. I'm just a drop in this ocean."
Mona Mahmoud and Hosham Hussein contributed reporting for this article. |
