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  • Iraqi chaos starting to breed sectarian strife

    Taipei Times
    Mon, August 2, 2004

    Iraqi chaos starting to breed sectarian strife

    `PROMOTION OF VIRTUE': The radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his army of
    devotees have been blamed for a campaign of intimidation and violence
    against Iraqi Christians

    THE OBSERVER , LONDON
    Monday, Aug 02, 2004,Page 7

    "The al-Sadr tide is the only active tide in the country."

    Sheikh Raed al-Kadhimi, one of Moqtada al-Sadr's aides

    First came the warning: a sheet of paper stuck to the door of Na'aman
    Khalil's shop ordering him to close his off-license.

    "You are corrupting the people of the Earth and you should stop," said the
    message, signed by a group calling itself the Monotheistic Movement of
    Jihad.

    Five days later, a parcel of and gutting the shop. Four other alcohol stores
    along the same street in Baghdad's largely Christian al-Ghadir district were
    bombed that same night.

    No one was injured, but the message was clear. After the bombings and a
    spate of other attacks across Baghdad, most of the city's alcohol shops
    closed.

    "They have achieved their aim. Whatever they wanted, they have got it," said
    Khalil, 24, who says the bombing cost him 7 million dinars in destroyed
    stock. "If I open the shop again I don't know what action they would take.
    Probably they would kill me."

    There have been no arrests, but police and many Iraqis blame the attacks and
    explosions on supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric.

    A few days before the warning letter arrived, several of al-Sadr's followers
    met around 30 Shiite tribal leaders in the al-Hekma mosque in Sadr City, the
    slum area in eastern Baghdad which forms the cleric's powerbase.

    They produced an edict in which they listed nine crimes punishable by death.
    These included theft, kidnapping, robbery, spying "for the Wahabis, al-Qaeda
    and Saddamists," trafficking in women, and selling alcohol, pornographic CDs
    and drugs.

    The edict, it states, was drawn up because of the "critical and sorrowful
    situation and lack of security and to serve the common good." Most of the
    tribal leaders who signed were from Amara, Kut and Nasiriyah, towns in
    southern Iraq where a Shiite uprising in April was strongest.

    "After the end of the dispute between our army and the Americans, our army
    is working on stability and controlling the looters and other violent
    groups," said Sheikh Raed al-Kadhimi, one of al-Sadr's aides in Baghdad. He
    boasted of a number of checkpoints and patrols in Sadr City, and said one
    had captured several hundred tonnes of stolen sugar, which he said were
    returned to the government.

    The movement, made up largely of young, unemployed urban men, has easily
    moved into the power vacuum left by the absence of properly trained and
    equipped Iraqi police and security forces.

    "Neither the government nor the police are controlling the situation," said
    al-Kadhimi. "The al-Sadr tide is the only active tide in the country."

    Much of the movement's strength is in its organization. The group has its
    own religious police, the al-Amur bil Ma'arouf, or Promotion of Virtue.

    They have divided Baghdad into three areas: east, west and the central
    Kadhimiya area, home to the biggest Shiite shrine in the city. Each area has
    its own unit. In Kadhimiya it numbers around 40; in the eastern sector,
    around Sadr City, it is at least 100 according to Sayed Adnan al-Safi, an
    al-Sadr official and editor of one of the movement's newspapers.

    "In Kadhimiya we have minimized and controlled places where alcohol is sold.
    We have controlled the sale of immoral CDs and we have stopped fraud," said
    al-Safi. "People have begun to understand and are co-operating with us to
    control the general violence. We are not issuing any punishments ourselves,
    otherwise we would be considered a state within a state. We pass cases on to
    the police for punishment."

    There is little doubt that the movement is about more than controlling
    crime. In the past week al-Sadr's followers have proselytized among Iraq's
    minority faiths. A group of them delivered a video of speeches by al-Sadr to
    the Armenian Orthodox church in Baghdad. A priest, who asked not to be
    named, said the speeches criticized the Christian faith.

    "We have been living in Iraq for 100 years and have never had a problem
    between Muslim and Christian," he said.
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