Baghdad Dweller
Free Iraq
Samara's black day .... لا سُـرّ من رأى
Destruction of holiest Shia shrine brings Iraq to the brink of civil warIndependent, 23 February 2006
Iraq took a lethal step closer to disintegration and civil war yesterday after a devastating attack on one of the country's holiest sites. The destruction of the golden-domed Shia shrine in Samarra sparked a round of bloody sectarian retaliation in which up to 60 Sunni mosques were attacked and scores of people were killed or injured.
The bomb attack has enraged the majority Shia population, who regard the shrine in the same way that Roman Catholics view St Peter's in Rome.
In a number of respects civil war in Iraq has already begun. Many of the thousand bodies a month arriving in the morgues in Baghdad are of people killed for sectarian reasons. It is no longer safe for members of the three main communities the Sunni and Shia Arabs and the Kurds to visit each other's parts of the country. ...
Shia leaders suspect that this is a manoeuvre by the US to keep them out of power. Washington has long been worried that the outcome of its invasion and overthrow of Saddam would be a Shia-dominated Islamic republic closely linked to Iran. It is also concerned with the rise of Mr al-Sadr, always against the occupation, to the position of power broker in the Shia coalition.
There are signs of increasing anti-American feeling among the Shia as they see the Americans allying themselves with the Sunni. As news spread of the attack on the Golden Mosque yesterday, thousands of young men marched shouting anti-American slogans through Sadr City, the great Shia slum with a population of two million. About 3,000 people marched through the Shia city of Kut shouting slogans against America and Israel and burning US and Israeli flags.
The extent of Shia retaliation may also depend on the Iranian government. The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urged Shia not to seek revenge against Sunni Muslims, saying there were definite plots "to force the Shia to attack the mosques and other properties respected by the Sunni. Any measure to contribute to that direction is helping the enemies of Islam and is forbidden by sharia."
Instead Ayatollah Khamenei blamed the intelligence services of the US and Israel for being behind the bombs in Samarra.
source
1 comments:
let's hope at some point and time the history books give a better account than what today's media and governments expect us to believe. ... goes far beyond Saddam.
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