Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani back in Iraq.
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| Wed, 08-25-2004 - 9:57am |
Revered Cleric Bids to Halt Najaf Fighting.
Iraq’s most powerful Shiite cleric arrived home from Britain today and his aides called for a nationwide march to Najaf to end nearly three weeks of fierce fighting between US forces and Shiite militants in this holy city.
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3405371
US warplanes fired on the neighbourhood, helicopters flew overhead and heavy gunfire was heard in the streets, witnesses said.
Iraqi police sealed off the Old City, preventing cars from entering, and Najaf’s police chief, Major General Ghalib al-Jazaari, said radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia was on its last legs.
“The Mahdi Army is finished,†he said. “Its hours are numbered.â€
Witnesses in the Old City said militants were still fighting in the streets, though the relentless American attacks in Najaf appeared to be weakening them.
Police today arrested several al-Sadr aides with valuables from the sacred Imam Ali Shrine, which they control, in their possession, al-Jazaari said.
One of al-Sadr’s top lieutenants, Sheik Ali Smeisim, was among those arrested.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani, 73, the nation’s top Shiite cleric, crossed into southern Iraq from Kuwait about midday in a caravan of sport utility vehicles accompanied by Iraqi police and national guardsmen. The convoy stopped in the southern city of Basra.
Al-Sistani had been in London for medical treatment since August 6, one day after clashes erupted in Najaf. The cleric wields enormous influence among Shiite Iraqis and his return could play a crucial role in stabilising the crisis.
Al-Sistani would head to Najaf on Thursday “to stop the bloodshed,†said Al-Sayyid Murtadha Al-Kashmiri, an al-Sistani representative in London. “Those believers who wish to join him, let them join,†he said.
Al-Jazaari, the police chief, cautioned Iraqis not to come to Najaf, saying they should await instructions from al-Sistani, “because their enemies could cause them a disaster and they could put their lives in danger.â€
U.S. forces advance on Iraqi shrine.
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=571144§ion=news
As helicopter gunships clatter over the holy Iraqi city of Najaf and sniper fire crackles through the alleyways, U.S. soldiers say they are forcing Shi'ite rebels to retreat to the Imam Ali shrine.
The shrine, a sacred site for millions of Shi'ites and now home to mostly fiery young supporters of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, is increasingly encircled by U.S. and Iraqi forces.
"What we are trying to do is shape up the battlefield. We are trying to isolate them in one place before attacking," U.S. Army 1st Lieutenant Michael Throckmortan told Reuters on Wednesday.
That has been the idea since the Cougar 3-8 Cavalry company arrived in an area of Najaf sandwiched between a dried up waterway and an impoverished neighbourhood that has become a stronghold for Sadr's Mehdi Army militia.
"They were all over the place with AK-47 rifles and rocket- propelled grenades, in all the buildings. There was more than 100 of them," said a U.S. soldier who asked not to be named.
"We hit them with the tanks and pushed them towards the shrine area."
Since the standoff started, most of those fighters have been digging in around the shrine, a golden domed structure that appears peaceful from a distance despite the explosions and bloodshed all around it. The Mehdi Army stills controls the alleyways leading to the shrine that are too small for tanks.
Sadr's men still fire mortars at an abandoned, heavily damaged school occupied by the Cougar 3-8 Cavalry. Two recently landed in the target zone but there were no casualties.
Throckmorton dismissed reports that Sadr's fighters had caved in to U.S. firepower and started fleeing Najaf in large numbers. "I have seen no evidence of that. People flee tanks but I have not seen them leaving," he said.
Najaf has been especially tense since the Iraqi government warned the rebels in the shrine on Tuesday that they faced their final hours before death if they did not give up.
Throckmorton said there were no moves by U.S. or Iraqi forces on the shrine overnight.
U.S. troops and tanks were slightly closer to the shrine, about 300 metres (yards) away, he said, in an area littered with mortars and pipe bombs lying on near-abandoned streets.
All the waiting in a three-week standoff has given snipers plenty of time to place their targets in the cross hairs as tanks and troops advance.
Throckmorton said he hoped Iraqi forces would be the first ones to set foot in the shrine. U.S. and Iraqi officials have said only Iraqi forces would storm the mosque.
In separate violence west of Baghdad, U.S. warplanes and tanks bombed the volatile city of Fallujah for more than two hours, killing at least four people, hospital officials and residents said.


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The Americans and the Iraqi government will find it hard to press for a military solution when such an important and revered figure is calling for an end to the violence.
...which, I'll bet, won't be to their liking at all.
But Ayatollah Sistani's return home is also likely to underline the fact that he has a spiritual authority that Mr Sadr cannot aspire to.
Yes, we'll have to see how Sadr's ego plays into this as well.
Al-Sistani arrives in Najaf.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/73FBE4AE-3CA1-474B-99B1-D52C12B4DC51.htm
Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani has arrived in Najaf
' Mr Bahr Ul Uloum said the grand ayatollah would spend the night in Basra, before travelling to Najaf today, gathering supporters in the southern cities of Nassiriya, Samawa and Diwaniya. He said he and a delegation of tribal and religious leaders from Najaf and the surrounding region would meet the ayatollah and his supporters on the edge of the holy city and march with them to the shrine. "If the fighting is still going on, the ayatollah will call on everyone to put down their guns," Mr Bahr Ul Uloum said. "Then he will go the holy shrine, pray, and receive the keys to the holy shrine." After that the political process would take over to resolve "outstanding issues" between Mr Sadr and the interim government, he said. '
Al-Hayat reports that Sistani will put forward a 4-point plan: 1) An immediate ceasefire will be called; the Mahdi Army will leave Najaf and so will the American military, turning security over to the Iraqi police. 2) The shrine of Ali will be returned to the supervision of the Pious Endowments Board headed by Husain al-Shami. 3) Najaf will be declared a security (i.e. non-combat) zone. The source to whom the newspaper's journalists spoke declined to reveal the fourth point.
Ash-Sharq al-Awsat says that Sayyid Muhammad Musawi, one of Sistani's more important aides, warned the Americans against damaging or raiding the shrine of Ali (where Mahdi Army militiamen are holed up). He said that if the Americans behaved this way, it would provoke "general" (i.e. nation-wide) protests and result in a "very bad" situation. This is a threat that Sistani will bring out large urban crowds against the Americans if they do not back off. He can do it, so it is not an empty boast. And those panglossian American military planners who think they have 10 years to get things right in Iraq will find themselves tossed out summarily from the country.
Al-Zaman reports that a procession toward Najaf has already begun from the other Shiite holy city of Karbala, to the northwest of Najaf.
It also reports that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has fully endorsed Sistani's call for a march on Najaf. SCIRI is represented on the caretaker government by Finance Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi.
Ash-Sharq al-Awsat says that Muqtada al-Sadr has issued a communique also calling on Shiites to come to Najaf. The Sadrists will inevitably attempt to piggy-back on Sistani's new activism. But since he is insisting that they leave the shrine, they are playing a weak hand.
The interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, dispatched two cabinet ministers to consult with Sistani. They are Minister of State Qassim Dawoud and Minister of Provincial Affairs, Judge Wael Abdul Latif.
The stakes here are enormous. If Iraqi police fire on the peaceful demonstrators again, or if US troops refuse to make way for Sistani, there could be a big social explosion in Iraq. If Sistani is successful in his plan, on the other hand, it will further increase his authority in the Shiite South and perhaps even transform him into a nationalist hero.
All this is important because Sistani is insisting on the January elections being held on time. If they are postponed he will almost certainly send his followers into the streets to protest, and could well bring down Allawi.
http://www.juancole.com/109237286614040284
"The source to whom the newspaper's journalists spoke declined to reveal the fourth point."
Huh. That's interesting.
Update: Al-Sadr militiamen turn in weapons, leave shrine.
A peace deal brokered by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and Shiite radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr brought peace and quiet Friday to Najaf, in ruins after three weeks of fighting between al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia and U.S. and Iraqi forces.
A senior al-Sadr representative said most Medhi Army members had turned in their weapons.
Residents who fled the fighting returned to their homes as crews started a huge cleanup operation at the Imam Ali Mosque, the holy Shiite site where hundreds of Mehdi militia members took refuge.
The mosque has been locked and the crowds of people who had gathered there have left the shrine compound. Iraqi police appear to be taking over positions previously held by U.S. forces in and around the city.
Ahead of a 10 a.m. (2 a.m. EDT) deadline for the Mehdi Army fighters to vacate the mosque, al-Sadr called on them to hand over their weapons before leaving.
"Do this so they won't condemn you and they won't condemn me," the speaker said, reading a letter from al-Sadr over the mosque's sound system.
The U.S. military, which ceased military offensive operations Thursday to help push forward a peace, said in a statement Friday it would continue to act only in self-defense and help the Iraqi forces and the Najaf governor restore order.
Earlier Friday, thousands of people streamed into the mosque after al-Sistani called for Shiites to go to Najaf in a peace march.
They gathered despite the fact that in Najaf and Kufa, 110 people were killed and 501 were wounded in a 24-hour period that began Thursday morning as Shiites heeded the call by al-Sistani.
The Health Ministry released the casualty figures Friday.
Many of the victims were killed Thursday in a mortar strike on the Kufa mosque, where the peace demonstrators gathered, and in gunfire aimed at marchers heading from Kufa to Najaf.
More......... http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/08/27/iraq.main/index.html
I agree, but it must be very important.
<>
"I think the big losers from the Najaf episode (part deux) are the Americans. They have become, if it is possible, even more unpopular in Iraq than they were last spring after Abu Ghuraib, Fallujah and Najaf Part 1. The US is perceived as culturally insensitive for its actions in the holy city of Najaf.
The Allawi government is also a big loser. Instead of looking decisive, as they had hoped, they ended up looking like the lackeys of neo-imperialists.
The big winner is Sistani, whose religious charisma has now been enhanced by solid nationalist credentials. He is a national hero for saving Najaf.
For Muqtada, it is a wash. He did not have Najaf until April, anyway, and cn easily survive not having it. His movement in the slums of the southern cities is intact, even if its paramilitary has been weakened."
http://www.juancole.com/109237286614040284
<<"could well bring down Allawi.">>
Openly, Sistani is apolitical. IMO he is waiting for the elections in January. So if there is not too much distruction or false moves by Allawi he won't overthrow the government. Sistani has always been more interested in a "democratic" process, because of the Shiite majority. I can surmise that Sistani went to England to prove to the interim government and Sadr that war is not the answer. The Sadr/Allawi conflict will go underground untill the next open conflict. My heart aches for the destruction of Najaf, but mentally I find the game fascinating.
(Third times the charm, I hope, lost 2 posts to you. :p)
"Sistani is apolitical. IMO he is waiting for the elections in January. "
I didn't realized how powerful he is.
Here's an interesting link, off your link...........
The return of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani sets the stage for ending the siege of Najaf. And the fact that the three-week battle looks set to end with a mass march by Iraqi Shiites to "save the (Imam Ali) Mosque" is a telling indicator of how the siege changed Iraq's power equation. Sistani has demanded that the U.S. and Iraqi forces withdraw from around the mosque and that Sadr's gunmen leave before he'll enter. The U.S. and the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi may have no option but to comply, because alienating Sistani, the most influential cleric in Iraq, would be political suicide. Getting Sadr's fighters out of the mosque would, of course, accomplish one of the government's primary objectives. Doing so along the lines suggested by Sistani, however, also helps Sadr.
More importantly, Sadr has called on his own supporters — most of whom hail not from Najaf, but from the urban Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, Basra and the cities in between — to answer Sistani's call and make for Najaf. Ever alert to the political opportunity, Moqtada Sadr appears intent on making sure he emerges from the siege looking not only victorious, but also in lockstep with Sistani and the Shiite clerical mainstream.
More......... http://www.time.com/time/columnist/karon/article/0,9565,688151,00.html
"The U.S. pounded the buildings in the Old City with more than a dozen artillery rounds and gunfire from AC-130 warplanes in a battle that continued this morning."
Islam will take note of American behavior, and it will not soon be forgotten.
I couldn't access the Financial Times. I know the NYT headlines said Sadr surrendered his arms, but it text only said he ask his troops to "lay down their arms". IMO Sadr did not surrender his arms, meaning they live to fight another day. Why do I think this? Because demonstrators went to the mosque and Sadr's men were encouraged to blend in.
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