Iraq toll mounts as forces fight cult
>From Patrick Cockburn in Amman
Published: 21 January 2008
Some 276 people were killed, wounded or captured by
government forces fighting a millenarian Shia cult in
southern Iraq over the past three days, the Iraqi
Ministry of Defence said in Baghdad yesterday.
The heavy losses in gun battles between the
'Supporters of the Mahdi' group and the police and
army in Basra and Nasiriya underlines how swiftly
violence can explode in Iraq where everybody is
heavily armed. In Nasiriya three senior officers were
among the dead.
The movement, led by Ahmad al-Hassani, also known as
Ahmad al-Yamani, believes in the imminent return of
the Messiah but exactly why its members should have
taken to the streets in several cities remains
unclear. In Basra they reportedly first killed several
traffic policemen and commandeered six empty vehicles
and two police cars. They later captured an oil
facilities building and a hospital. At one point there
was fighting in 75 per cent of Basra, a city of two
million people, according to the police chief Abdul
Jalil Khalaf.
It is a measure of the lack of information on what is
happening outside central Baghdad that casualty
figures vary widely with one source claiming that 97
died and 217 were wounded in Basra alone. In Baghdad
the National Security Adviser Muwafaq al-Rubaie was
trapped in a Shia mosque in the Sh'la district in west
Baghdad but it is not clear if his attackers were also
from the 'Supporters of the Mahdi' movement, that
appears to have supporters in every Shia city.
Southern Iraq, which is overwhelmingly Shia, is riven
by rivalries between different Shia parties that
sporadically leads to turf battles. The most powerful
militia is the Mehdi Army of the nationalist cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr who this week threatened to end a
six-month truce he declared last August after fighting
with government security forces controlled by the
Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) in the holy
city of Kerbala. ISCI, though never very popular among
Shia, controls the police and local government
apparatus in much of southern Iraq, and has long
feuded with the Sadrists.
The US military said yesterday in Baghdad that Iran
was supplying less weaponry to insurgent groups in
Iraq, but was continuing to train and finance them.
The US has long accused Iran of being the source of
sophisticated roadside bombs used by Shia militias
against US troops. In practice, however, Iran has
always supported almost every Shia party including
ISCI, an important US ally, which was originally
established under the auspices of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards during the Iran-Iraq war in 1982.
The violence over the weekend took place as Iraqi
Shia, 60 per cent of the population, took part in
ceremonies marking Ashura, the traditional day of
mourning for the death of Imam Hussein, killed in the
battle of Kerbala in 680 AD. With some 2.5 million
Shia travelling to Kerbala the day is often marked by
violence.
The killing of Imam Hussein is re-enacted in passion
plays and this in turn can lead to violence. In Basra
a crowd reportedly set about an actor playing the role
of one of the killers of the Imam and his doomed
followers. They beat him so badly that he returned to
his home to get his AK-47 assault rifle and opened
fire on the crowd watching the play, killing one
onlooker.
Ashura is also a show of strength by the Iraqi Shia
who replaced the Sunni as the dominant force in Iraqi
politics on the fall of Saddam Hussein five years ago.
In alliance with the Kurds they make up the government
since the elections of 2005 but have proved unable to
set up a stable government able to conciliate the
Sunni or act without American support.
---------------
Jusfiq Hadjar gelar Sutan Maradjo Lelo
Allah yang disembah orang Islam tipikal dan yang digambarkan oleh al-Mushaf itu
dungu, buas, kejam, keji, ganas, zalim lagi biadab hanyalah Allah fiktif.
__________________________________________________________
Sent from Yahoo! Mail - a smarter inbox http://uk.mail.yahoo.com
Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
