Anti-Saudi tide rising in Iraq….with pilgrimage swelling

Iraq’s leaders use a Shiite holiday to shift attention from Iran to its Sunni neighbors.

By Sam Dagher | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the August 9, 2007 edition, We share the story behind the story.

Baghdad – Shiite Iraqis began arriving here this week for a mass pilgrimage Thursday to a revered imam’s shrine. Much of the city is now locked down, closed off to protect the nearly 1 million faithful expected to pay tribute in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Kadhimiya.

But not only is this march to honor Imam Musa al-Kadhim in a Shiite Muslim rite, it has become a show of newfound power and defiance in the face of hard-line Sunni suicide bombers who continue to wreak havoc in their communities.

This year’s pilgrimage also comes amid an unprecedented wave of anger toward Saudi Arabia. Government and religious leaders here charge that the neighboring kingdom is doing little to stem the flow of its nationals to Iraq to wage “holy war” on Shiites.

The Saudi backlash is being fueled by Iraqi media reports and Shiite leaders’ condemnations of apparent fatwas, religious rulings by Saudi muftis calling for the destruction of Shiite shrines in Iraq.

But some Saudi Arabian analysts say this is a way for Baghdad’s pro-Iranian leaders to steer attention away from Tehran’s involvement in Iraq and toward its Sunni neighbors. In spite of questions about their authenticity, the fatwas are stirring up much of the Shiite community and is indeed coloring this year’s pilgrimage.

“It is going to be the pilgrimage of defiance in the face of these fatwas that desecrate the imams and call for the destruction of their shrines,” says Hazem al-Araji, a leader in the movement of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

“Every Shiite that venerates the imams must say to the mufti [Sunni cleric] that we will defend the imams with our blood,” he says.

As pilgrims began arriving Tuesday, the image of seventh Shiite Imam Musa al-Kadhim in shackles hung on banners over the neighborhood of Kadhimiya. The imam was poisoned about 1,200 years ago.

His persecution resonates deeply in Iraq today as Shiites try to hold onto unprecedented political gains while being viewed with suspicion in the Sunni Muslim world, especially in Sunni-led Saudi Arabia where Shiites are seldom allowed to openly practice their religion.

“So far, the Saudi attitude in particular, and the Arab one in general, has been negative toward the political process in Iraq,” says Ridha Jawad Taqi, an Iraqi Shiite parliamentarian. “If they want nothing to do with us then we will just look for friends elsewhere.”

Further fanning the flames of anti-Saudi public sentiment is the outrage expressed over an incident that Mr. Taqi says took place Sunday in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, when a group of Iraqi Shiites, including his son, were roughed up by Saudi security forces.

“They noticed they were Shiites because one of them was wearing a black turban so they rounded 12 of them up and beat them up with batons including my son Amir,” he says, adding that his son plans to sue Saudi authorities, who have not publicly commented on the incident.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki arrived in Tehran on Wednesday to discuss security and economic cooperation with Iran. Business, diplomatic, cultural, and religious ties are rapidly deepening between both countries.

Mr. Maliki even vowed Monday to crack down on the Mujahideen-e Khalq Organization, an Iranian dissident group once nurtured by Saddam Hussein during his long war with Iran’s clerical regime but is now under the protection of US forces in Diyala Province northeast of Baghdad.

One Saudi fatwa allegedly called for the destruction of the mausoleum of Imam Hussein in Karbala, south of Baghdad. The violent death of the third imam and his companions in battle against the caliph’s army in AD 680 marked the schism between Sunnis and Shiites. The intensity of the standoff over the centuries tended to track regional political upheaval.

And Iraq authorities are taking the threats seriously, especially in light of the bombing of the twin minarets at the Askariya shrine in Samarra north of Baghdad in June that followed an attack on its dome in February 2006.

A three-day ban on vehicle traffic starting Wednesday has been imposed in Baghdad with extra checkpoints springing up all over the city.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0809/p01s05-wome.html?page=3

New York Times: are civilian deaths from u.s. air attacks alienating support of local Afghans?

British Criticize U.S. Air Attacks in Afghan Region

Joao Silva for The New York Times, Article written by Carlotta Gall

Hajji Mir Gul held Bashir Ahmed, his 2-year-old grandson, at the British base in Sangin. NATO doctors had removed shrapnel from the boy’s abdomen and warned that he might not survive.

SANGIN, Afghanistan — A senior British commander in southern Afghanistan said in recent weeks that he had asked that American Special Forces leave his area of operations because the high level of civilian casualties they had caused was making it difficult to win over local people.

Other British officers here in Helmand Province, speaking on condition of anonymity, criticized American Special Forces for causing most of the the civilian deaths and injuries in their area.  They also expressed concerns that the American’s extensive use of air power was turning the people against the foreign presence as British forces were trying to solidify recent gains against the Taliban. 

An American military spokesman denied that the request for American forces to leave was ever made, either formally or otherwise, or that they had caused most of the casualties. But the episode underlines differences of opinion among NATO and American military forces in Afghanistan on tactics for fighting Taliban insurgents, and concerns among soldiers about the consequences of the high level of civilians being killed in fighting.

A precise tally of civilian deaths is difficult to pin down, but one reliable count puts the number killed in Helmand this year at close to 300 civilians, the vast majority of them caused by foreign and Afghan forces, rather than the Taliban.

“Everyone is concerned about civilian casualties,” the senior British commander said. “Of course it is counterproductive if civilians get injured, but we’ve got to pick up the pack of cards that we have got. Other people have been operating in our area before us.”

After months of heavy fighting that began in early 2006, the British commanders say they are finally making headway in securing important areas such as this town, and are now in the difficult position of trying to win back support among local people whose lives have been devastated by aerial bombing.

American Special Forces have been active in Helmand since United States forces first entered Afghanistan in late 2001, and for several years they maintained a small base outside the town of Gereshk. But the foreign troop presence was never more than a few hundred men.

British forces arrived in the spring of 2006 and now have command of the province with some 6,000 troops deployed, with small units of Estonians and Danish troops. American Special Forces have continued to assist in fighting insurgents, operating as advisers to Afghan national security forces.

It is these American teams that are coming under criticism. They tend to work in small units that rely heavily on air cover because they are vulnerable to large groups of insurgents. Such Special Forces teams have often called in airstrikes in Helmand and other places where civilians have subsequently been found to have suffered casualties.

In just two cases, airstrikes killed 31 nomads west of Kandahar in November last year and another 57 villagers, half of them women and children, in western Afghanistan in April. In both cases, United States Special Forces were responsible for calling in the airstrikes.

The chief British press officer in Helmand, Col. Charles Mayo, defended the American Special Forces and said they were essential to NATO’s efforts to clear out heavily entrenched Taliban insurgents.

An American military spokesman said United States Special Forces would continue to operate in Helmand for the foreseeable future. He denied that their tactics had caused greater civilian deaths and blamed the Taliban for fighting from civilian compounds.

“U.S. Special Forces have a tremendous reputation not only in combat operations but also in training and advising the Afghan National Security Forces,” Lt. Col. David Accetta, a spokesman for American forces in Afghanistan, said in an e-mail response from Bagram air base.

United States Special Forces had also provided development and medical assistance, which, with the combat missions, “can be said to have ‘turned the tide’ in Helmand,” he said.

But the senior British commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity during an interview in July, said that in Sangin, which has been calm recently, there was no longer a need for United States Special Forces. “There aren’t large bodies of Taliban to fight anymore; we are dealing with small groups and we are trying to kick-start reconstruction and development,” he said.

Orders had just come down from the NATO force’s headquarters in Kabul, which is led by Gen. Dan K. McNeill of the United States, re-emphasizing the need to avoid civilian deaths, he said.

“The phrase is: ‘It may be legal but is it appropriate?’ No one is saying it is illegal to use air power, but is there any other way of doing it if there is a risk of collateral damage?” he said. 

Mosul: dam could break at any time

Disaster looms as ‘Saddam dam’ struggles to hold back the Tigris

see also 10-30-07 update posting on the mosul dam (with satellite view)

As world attention focuses on the daily slaughter in Iraq, a devastating disaster is impending in the north of the country, where the wall of a dam holding back the Tigris river north of Mosul city is in danger of imminent collapse. “It could go at any minute,” says a senior aid worker who has knowledge of the struggle by US and Iraqi engineers to save the dam. “The potential for disaster is very great.” If the dam does fail, a wall of water will sweep into Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city with a population of 1.7 million, 20 miles to the south.

Experts say the flood waters could destroy 70 per cent of Mosul and inflict heavy damage 190 miles downstream along the Tigris. The dam was built between 1980 and 1984 and has long been known to be in a dangerous condition because of unstable bedrock. “The dam was constructed on a foundation of marls, soluble gypsum, anhydrite, and karstic limestone that are continuously dissolving,” said specialists at the US embassy in a statement. “The dissolution creates an increased risk for dam failure.”

Further Update:

In 2003, experts from the Corps of Engineers laid out a scenario equal to a decent disaster movie and one that may evoke memories of Hurricane Katrina:

“(Collapse of the Mosul Dam) would set in motion a cascade of catastrophe, unleashing as much as 12.5 billion cu m of water pooled behind the 3.2-km-long earth-filled impoundment thundering down the Tigris River Valley toward Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. The wave behind the 110-m-high crest would take about two hours to reach the city of 1.7 million.”

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The Mosul dam holds back upwards of 12 billion cubic meters of water for the arid western Ninewah Province, while creating hydroelectric power for the 1.7 million residents of Mosul

Patrick Cockburn writes for the Independent:

The state of the two-mile long earthfill dam, which holds back some eight billion cubic metres of water in Iraq’s largest reservoir, has recently been deteriorating at ever-increasing speed. According to one source, the chance of a total and immediate failure of the dam is now believed to be “reasonably high” at current water levels and “most certain” within the next few years.The effort to prevent the collapse of the dam is overseen by the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources. The US Army Corps of Engineers has made continual efforts to monitor the deterioration and undertake remedial action. But a US report, obtained separately from the embassy statement, says that “due to fundamental and irreversible flaws existing in the dam’s foundation, the US Army Corps of Engineers believes that the safety of the Mosul Dam against a potential catastrophic failure cannot be guaranteed”.

The US State Department advertises that it supplies the Iraqi government with $20 million dollars worth of grouting equipment for the Mosul dam through the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund. But grouting the dam can only provide temporary relief, and does nothing to reconstruct the failing infrastructure that threatens to turns large swaths of Iraqi land into a watery graveyard.

Though the US maintains the Iraqi government holds responsibility for the dam, its failure would most certainly be blamed on both. Making a serious commitment to secure the Mosul Dam appears the only way to ensure the city–one rare beacon of semi-stability in the country–does not become a disaster area.

Shi’a mourners honor their Imam al-Kadhim in steady 110+ degree heat

Huge throngs of Shiite worshippers — some flogging themselves with iron chains or cutting their foreheads with swords — are expected to walk toward the mosque, the shrine of Imam al-Kadhim, located in the northern Kazimiyah neighborhood.

The ritualized self-flagellation is a grieving rite that was banned under Saddam Hussein. Since his ouster in the 2003 U.S. invasion, Shiite political parties have encouraged huge turnouts at such religious festivals to display their power in Iraq’s new order.

By Wednesday, more than 1,500 pilgrims had passed through several checkpoints into the area, said an Iraqi police lieutenant who identified himself only as Fadil, because of security concerns.

Beating her chest, Zeinab Muhammad Ali had pushed a baby stroller during the 90-minute walk to the site, with six more young children trailing behind her. The 42-year-old said she was undeterred by the threat of violence.

“He’s my imam — he died for us Shiites — so we must visit and mourn him,” she said.

Mosque heavily guarded
More than 1,800 Iraqi security forces were guarding the mosque complex, including 625 agents inside the shrine, officials said. Shiite militiamen also are known to be deployed throughout the area.

“The vulnerable points are where pilgrims are assembling to come in — checkpoints, bus depots — places like that. Then, obviously, the crowds around the shrine. You’ll have al-Qaida try to launch rockets and/or mortars to inflict casualties,” said Miska, 39, from Greenport, N.Y.

This year, water trucks have been stationed at intersections throughout the Kazimiyah neighborhood to quench thirst in the 115-degree heat. Tents strung with colored lights and flowers provided shade for travelers, many of whom came from around Iraq.

Men piled firewood for bonfires, where big cauldrons will hold soup and rice for passers-by. One young boy used a squirt gun to spray cool water over the crowd.