Clerical error
Having overestimated his support, radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr backs down
NAJAF--In the moments before Moqtada al-Sadr cut a deal to withdraw from this holy city, his Mahdi Army fighters were up in arms. Hundreds of bedraggled men circled the holy shrine of Imam Ali in a beelike swarm, heads swathed in black bandanas, hands clutching beat-up Kalashnikovs. Wooden coffins containing men killed in recent fighting were lifted above their heads, while the rabble-rousers chanted "We will follow you to the death, Moqtada!"
In the past two months, hundreds have done so. Fighting between Sadr's men and U.S.-led coalition forces has claimed the lives of over 350 Iraqis, a heavy toll on the ad hoc militia, and 21 coalition soldiers. With his losses, Sadr started looking for a way to bow out gracefully, approaching high-ranking Shiite politicians and clergy to help him cut a deal with the United States. Finally, last week, in the latest of on-again, off-again cease-fires, Sadr agreed "to put an end to the tragic events in holy Najaf, and the violation of the holy shrines in it," by disbanding his troops.
That at least held out hope for a break in the worst violence here. "The country has a lot of problems and a poor population. The mobs were there, waiting for an activist to lead them," said Adel Abdel Mehdi, a prominent Shiite member of the Governing Council. "But [Sadr] went beyond his limits and undertook a task his organization can not fulfill, like waging war and taking a holy city hostage. This is something that exposed him, and now people are rejecting him."
While the mob of men pulsating outside the shrine continued to cry that all of Najaf was united with the Mahdi Army, just a few blocks away the attitude was starkly different. "The ideal solution is disarmament of all militia," said Internet cafe owner Ali al-Assadi, 50. "Najaf wants peace."
If both parties stick to the deal, Assadi will get his wish. The agreement calls for U.S. troops to pull back, making way for Iraq's newly minted security forces to patrol the city. Under the terms, Sadr will withdraw all fighters who are not residents of Najaf and shut down his impromptu sharia courts, which had been convicting citizens as "traitors" and "spies" for cooperating with coalition forces. It was unclear whether the outstanding murder arrest warrant against Sadr would be suspended, or what the deadline was for his rebels to disband.
With the party over, some of Sadr's fighters got to packing, loading rocket-propelled grenades and bags of clothes into a rundown pickup truck outside the vast, ocher-colored graveyard on the city's outskirts. The crumbling wall surrounding the cemetery displays gaping holes from the fighting, as elsewhere in the city, where buildings were peppered with mortar rounds and bullets.
Ghost town. Tensions escalated when Najaf's proudest symbol, the Shrine of Imam Ali, was hit by a Russian-made mortar--weapons used by the Iraqi Army under Saddam Hussein. The hole in the golden dome, and brick-size damage beneath it, seemed modest compared with the outrage it caused from the international Shiite community and the locals, who blamed U.S. troops for the sacrilegious aggression. "We're very upset with what happened," said Haider Hassen outside the multicolored mosaic tiles and cool, marble floors of the shrine. "We couldn't believe that America, a democracy, would hit a holy shrine. Even Saddam Hussein with all his might never did that. America's credibility has fallen bellow zero."
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