Tuesday was an apocalyptic day in Iraq - Juan Cole

[kpete]

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Shiite protests Roil Iraq

Tuesday was an apocalyptic day in Iraq. I am not normally exactly sanguine about the situation there. But the atmospherics are very, very bad, in a way that most Western observers will miss.

The day started out with a protest by ten thousand people in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, against the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. These days, Shiites are weeping, mourning and flagellating in commemoration of the martyrdom of the Prophet's grandson, Imam Husayn. So it is an emotional time in the ritual calendar. when feelings can easily be whipped up about issues like insults to the Prophet. An anti-Danish demonstration in Karbala is a surrogate for anti-American and anti-occupation sentiment. The US won't be able to stay in Iraq withiut increasing trouble of this sort.

Then guerrillas set off a huge bomb in a Shiite corner of the mostly Sunni Arab Dura quarter of Baghdad, killing 22 and wounding 28. Another 9 were killed in other violence around Iraq. These attacks are manifestations of an unconventional civil war.

Then real disaster struck. The guerriillas blew up the domed Askariyah shrine in Samarra. The shrine, sacred to Shiiites, honors 3 Imams or holy descendants of the Prophet. They are Ali al-Hadi, Hasan al-Askari, and his disappeared son Muhammad al-Mahdi. Thousands of Shiiites demonnstrated in Samarra and in East Baghdad, against this desecration.

http://www.juancole.com/2006/02/shiite-protests-roil-iraq-tuesday-was.html

[lonestarnot]

1. This is oh sheeeite time!

[Cooley Hurd]

2. K&R - when Juan Cole's freaked out about this...

...it freaks me out, too!:scared:

More from Professor Cole's article:

<snip>
Some Shiites think his second coming is imminent. Muqtada all-Sadr and his followers are among them. They are livid about this attack on the shrine of the Mahdi's father.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also a firm believer in the imminent coming of the Mahdi. I worry that Iranian anger will boil over as a result of this bombing of a Shiite millenarian symbol.

Both Sunnis and Americans will be blamed. Very bad.
</snip>

Hooboy... this ain't good.x(

[lonestarnot]

3. Occupation must end sooner rather than later!

[acmejack]

4. The really bad news was down page

snip>
Then real disaster struck. The guerriillas blew up the domed Askariyah shrine in Samarra. The shrine, sacred to Shiiites, honors 3 Imams or holy descendants of the Prophet. They are Ali al-Hadi, Hasan al-Askari, and his disappeared son Muhammad al-Mahdi. Thousands of Shiiites demonnstrated in Samarra and in East Baghdad, against this desecration.

The Twelfh Imam or Mahdi is believed by Shiites to have disappeared into a supernatural realm (just as Christians believe in the ascension of Christ) from which he will someday return.

Some Shiites think his second coming is imminent. Muqtada all-Sadr and his followers are among them. They are livid about this attack on the shrine of the Mahdi's father.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also a firm believer in the imminent coming of the Mahdi. I worry that Iranian anger will boil over as a result of this bombing of a Shiite millenarian symbol.
snip>

edit to add url http://www.juancole.com/2006/02/shiite-protests-roil-iraq-tuesday-was.html

ruh roh

[kpete]

5. Before and after picture of Golden Dome

Hearts and minds

[phusion]

16. oh no...

That's horrible. :(

[cantstandbush]

6. The Bush administration opened this can of worms invading Iraq.

nothing can be done except to watch the carnage over there and wait for it to strike here...and it will...do not be mistaken. Bush may be out of office and others may be stuck with the blame but it will all be because of this short-sighted, greedy, racist, and evil regime being controlled by the neocon-PNAC agenda and being protected by a complicit media. We are all going to reap what they have sown.

[freefall]

13. Agreed. It may not be tomorrow but it will probably be sooner rather than

later. We have been abusing our position in the world for far too long. We are going to get our comeuppance. It saddens me to think that no matter what I do, the real penance for our sins will be paid by our children and grandchildren and beyond.

Peace

freefall

[Nimrod2005]

7. As my 3 year old daughter would say: oh boy oh boy...nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. Poking a hornet's nest and expecting kisses.

The sheer stupidity of getting embroiled in the multi-faceted middle east conflicts is mind boggling.

[Just Me]

9. Who are these "guerrillas"? Are they Iraqis?

Are they attempting to inflame the Muslim population into an all-out uprising against "the West"?

What have the fucking neoconsters done? Damnit!!! Are they going to GET their 40 year war?

I want this to STOP!!!!

[lapislzi]

17. 40-year war? Who are you kidding?

They want war to be a permanent fixture of the American landscape. So our children should know only war. War is the new "normal." They've made significant progress towards this goal.

[bananas]

10. "Shiite leader cites U.S. in shrine blast"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2124584

[Theres-a]

11. Damn it.

It's on now.

[Javaman]

12. "unconventional civil war." he's got that right...

rather than the usual modern day civil wars of running gangs with guns mounted on open back toyota pickups spraying gun fire in every direction, Iraqi's will just blow each other up.

[Hissyspit]

15. "Civil War With Occupation"

While the pundits and analysts argue over definitions and delineations, it goes on in Iraq.

[land of the free]

14. another article on Cole: Iraq, the anti-Muslim cartoons, etc.

Here's a link to a new article by Detroit's "Metro Times", where they interview Cole. His prediction of the best case scenario or Iraq is quite sad.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x487885

A couple of excerpts that I found interesting:
"MT: Do you think the U.S. media conveys to us what's going on in Iraq?

Cole: I think that most Americans have no idea what a hellhole Iraq really is at this moment. Baghdad is being starved for fuel and electricity. A fourth of the country lives there. It's the capital. That's not a good situation. In about half of the country there's substantial insecurity, bombs going off, assassinations. It's not everywhere all the time. It's every once in a while in some places. But, over time, it disrupts things. It disrupts the economy; it disrupts people's lives. It makes people more nervous about even going out. I think most Americans just can't imagine that situation. And they're not being given a contextual account of how it's happening in Iraq. I did a piece in September of 2004 where I imagined what the United States would be like if it were like Iraq. That was probably the most popular thing I've ever written.

(Excerpt: "Violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.")

By mapping those events onto the United States, I made it legible to a lot of people. I don't think it should be so hard for our media to do that, but I've never seen them do it, or very seldom."

<snip>
"The fact is the average American is much more likely to die from a lightning strike or falling in a bathtub than from being killed by a terrorist. It's psychologically a much more damaging risk to have a fair number of people blown up than to have random people across the country struck and killed by lightning. But it's not the kind of threat that should make us eager to give up the liberties in our Constitution or to give up domestic programs that are important for the lives of ordinary Americans or to give up our ability to handle crises like New Orleans and so forth.

In my view. the U.S. government, if it were really worried about al-Qaida, shouldn't have been invading Iraq. Iraq didn't have anything to do with al-Qaida. If we had spent the kind of money were spending in Iraq on fighting al-Qaida, it would have been got 10 times over. Now we're going to end up spending a trillion, 2 trillion dollars on the Iraq misadventure. I don't know what we've spent fighting al-Qaida, but it's been a relatively small amount. That tells me something — that the Bush administration is far more interested in reconfiguring Iraq than it is in fighting al-Qaida. And yet the rhetoric is all about the war on terror and al-Qaida."

I love what he said in the last two paragraphs. I wish more Americans would wake up and smell the reality.

[kpete]

18. Thanks Bush

Civil war imminent in Iraq
AM - Thursday, 23 February , 2006 08:00:00
Reporter: Mark Willacy

TONY EASTLEY: The spectre of full-blown civil war has reared its head in Iraq after insurgents blew up the golden dome of one of Shi'a Islam's holiest shrines.

Thousands of Shi'ites have taken to the streets in cities right across Iraq to protest against the attack on the al-Askari mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2006/s1576417.htm


Iraq: On The Brink Of Civil War?
By Kathleen Ridolfo

Imam Ali al-Hadi Mosque after the bombing

Sectarian tensions in Iraq took a turn for the worse on 22 February when armed men detonated explosives inside the Golden Mosque in Samarra, home to a revered Shi'ite shrine, blowing the roof off the building. Iraqi leaders have scrambled to contain the ensuing retaliatory attacks by Shi'a, amid rising fears that the country could be on the brink of civil war. At least six Sunnis have been killed already in retaliatory attacks, and nearly 30 Sunni mosques attacked.


Two of the 12 Shi'ite imams -- Imam Ali al-Hadi, who died in 868 A.D., and his son, Imam Hasan al-Askari, who died in 874 A.D. -- are buried at the mosque. The complex also contains the shrine of the 12th imam, al-Mahdi, who is said to have gone into hiding through a cellar in the complex in 878, and is expected to return on Judgment Day.

Both the Ansar Al-Sunnah Army and the Mujahedin Shura Council -- an alliance of terrorist groups that includes Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda-affiliated group (see RFE/RL Iraq Report," 27 January 2006) -- are suspected in the attack. Both groups have insurgents operating in Samarra, and have claimed responsibility for attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces there in recent weeks. Just like the assassination of revered Shi'ite Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim in Al-Najaf in 2003, no group has claimed responsibility for the Samarra attack.

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/02/88CEE1C1-0D2E-4936-B9AF-6E3503E728CA.html



Iraq slips towards civil war after attack on Shia shrine

Appeals for calm fail to halt reprisals

Michael Howard in Irbil
Thursday February 23, 2006
The Guardian


Iraqi Shiite men brandish their weapons and chant slogans as they protest the bombing of the holy Shiite shrine in Samarra. Photograph: Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images

Iraq's political and religious leaders were engaged in a desperate effort last night to stop the country from sliding into civil war after a huge bomb shattered the golden-domed mosque in the city of Samarra, one of Shia Islam's most revered sites.

At least six people were killed as demonstrations and armed clashes erupted across southern Iraq, and there were retaliatory attacks on Sunni mosques in Baghdad as thousands of furious Shia Muslims took to the streets. In an apparent reprisal attack, gunmen in police uniforms seized a dozen Sunni men suspected of being insurgents from a prison in the mainly Shia city of Basra and killed 11 of them, police and British forces said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1715981,00.html



Associated Press
Update 32: Shrine Attack Brings Civil War Warning
By ZIAD KHALAF , 02.22.2006, 01:58 PM


Insurgents detonated bombs inside one of Iraq's holiest Shiite shrines Wednesday, destroying its golden dome and triggering more than 60 reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques. The president warned that extremists were pushing the country toward civil war, as many Shiites lashed out at the United States as partly to blame.

As the gold dome of the 1,200-year-old Askariya shrine lay in ruins, leaders on both sides called for calm: But the string of back-and-forth attacks seemed to push the country closer to all-out civil war than at any point in the three years since the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

"We are facing a major conspiracy that is targeting Iraq's unity," said President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd. "We should all stand hand in hand to prevent the danger of a civil war."

http://www.forbes.com/business/manufacturing/feeds/ap/2006/02/22/ap2545545.html


Iraq spirals toward civil conflict after Shiite shrine is destroyed
BY LIZ SLY
Chicago TribuneBAGHDAD, Iraq
- Unknown assailants destroyed one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines Wednesday in the northern city of Samarra, triggering widespread street protests by enraged Shiites and a rash of retaliatory attacks against Sunni mosques that sent sectarian tensions soaring in this already dangerously divided country.

Political leaders appealed for calm, warning that the attack on the al-Askari shrine was an attempt by terrorists to inflame religious passions and incite civil strife.

"We are facing a major conspiracy that targets Iraq's unity," said President Jalal Talabani. "We should all stand hand in hand to prevent the danger of a civil war."

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/world/13936493.htm

[twaddler01]

20. Let the good times roll

:puke: I suspect the Shiites are running out of patience....

[twaddler01]

19. that hurts

What have we done? What has * DONE!!!?