[casi] News, 09-16/04/03 (3)

[Peter Brooke <pbrooke@DELETETHISukonline.co.uk>]

News, 09-16/04/03 (3)

SADDAM CITY (see also 'Turbulent Mullahs')

*  Baghdad's disaffected Shiites warn US to help, or else ...
*  Shiites stage show of force
*  District in Baghdad claims autonomy
*  Armed Shia on streets in first sign of power tussle

TURBULENT MULLAHS (see also 'Iraqi Collaboration')

*  Former Iraqi general Nizar Al-Khazaraji and Islamic scholar Majid
Al-Khoi'i have both been executed by Iraqi residents of Najaf for being
"American stooges"
*  US-backed militia terrorises town
*  Murdered in a mosque: the cleric who went home to act as a peacemaker
*  Crowd hack to death Muslim clerics
*  Siege of Iraqi cleric ends - aide
*  Shiite cleric ordered to leave Iraq
*  Local Shiite clerics condemn tension in Najaf


SADDAM CITY

http://www.jordantimes.com/Mon/news/news9.htm

*  BAGHDAD'S DISAFFECTED SHIITES WARN US TO HELP, OR ELSE ...
by Jacques Charmelot
Jordan Times, 14th April

BAGHDAD (Agence France-Presse): To listen to the Baghdad businessmen whose
shops have been ravaged by looters since the fall of President Saddam
Hussein, the troublemakers all originate from one vast disaffected slum on
the northern outskirts: Saddam City.

For the two million residents of the shantytown, most of them from Islam's
Shiite sect, the message to Iraq's new US powerbroker is simple: Help us,
and help us immediately.

"If they've come to liberate us, then they must help us, and we're not
giving them much time," said Sheikh Abdul Razzak Al Lami, who preaches at
the Al Rahman Mosque in the heart of the slum.

What the Shiites need, Lami told AFP, is just about everything basic: water,
electricity, jobs and, above all, a sense of freedom.

Saddam City, one of the first parts of Baghdad to fall to US forces, is a
dense maze of run down alleyways. Drains spit out putrid mud and refuse
piles up under window sills. Barefoot children battle with the dogs and
goats for whatever leftovers can be found.

The flag that flies here is not the Iraqi one but a religious green, red and
black tricolour. And the slum has banished Saddam's name; it prefers to be
called Al Sadr City in honour of Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammad Sadek Al Sadr,
an Iraqi Shiite dignitary whose 1999 assassination sparked riots here.

Shiites form a majority of Iraq's population but went virtually
unrepresented in the high echelons of Saddam's regime. Tens of thousands of
Shiites from Iraq's south began settling in the 1940s and 1950s in what
became Saddam City, living initially in huts and tents. Mostly farmers, they
hoped to escape the harsh feudal system still in force at the time.

When US forces rumbled into the heart of Baghdad on April 9, the
long-repressed Shiites gave an idea of what they could do. By the thousands,
they marched downtown and ransacked palaces and ministries, symbols of the
power from which they were long excluded.

But they also trashed institutions to which they did have access, including
hospitals and state-run stores.

Many here hasten to make clear that Shiites, or at least the vast majority
of Shiites, were not behind the rampages that have already left some
Baghdadis longing for the stability of Saddam's regime.

"These thefts were organised by members of the Baath Party," said Sheikh Al
Lami's secretary Rabih Abu Ahmed, alleging that Saddam's party was behind
one more atrocity as it entered its grave.

"It's a provocation," Abu Ahmad said. "This doesn't come from the majority
of sensible people in this neighbourhood. I consider it the work of people
who are deranged."

He stressed that "the wise men of Najaf," a Shiite holy city in southern
Iraq, had issued orders to the faithful not only to refrain from thievery
but to give back anything that was stolen. He proudly showed a heap of loot
handed back at his mosque.

"We welcome the newly found freedom, but we will never do what God has
forbidden," he said.

Sheikh Al Lami assured that Shiites were not targeting the Sunni minority.
But while the Shiite leaders' tone was conciliatory, the threat was also
clear ‹ and it was not directed toward Iraqis.

"The United States doesn't think about us. They think only of their own
profits, about oil," said Abu Ahmad.

The sheikh said the United States "wants people to remain in their misery.

"We have understood this very well and we're still giving them a bit of
time," the sheikh said.

At the mosque, a group of young people listened in. Their faces showed
seriousness, but not hostility. After decades out of power, they just wanted
to talk.

"We know what they want. It's obvious for us," one young man, who identified
himself as Abu Ali, said of the Americans.

If US forces did not prove different intentions, he said, "then it will be
civil war."


http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=25239

*  SHIITES STAGE SHOW OF FORCE
by Jacques Charmelot
Arab News (Saudi Arabia), 15th April

BAGHDAD, 15 April 2003, AFP: Baghdad's Shiites, part of the majority
religious group in Iraq, have broken a long silence to claim a status
commensurate with the size of their community in any post-Saddam Hussein
political arrangement.

"It is religious leaders, not the Americans, who control Iraq," the imam of
the Al-Rasul Mosque in a primarily Shiite suburb of northern Baghdad, stated
confidently.

To drive the point home, Sayyed Ali Al-Shawki has surrounded himself with
militiamen armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles plus a personal bodyguard,
clad in black and with a silver gun tucked to his belt.

Other leaders of the Shiite community, which makes up some 60 percent of
Iraq's 25-million population, are similarly speaking freely for the first
time since Saddam's Baath Party seized control of the country in 1968 after
a nine-month stint in power five years earlier.

They are talking to the press, listing their demands, and even issuing
threats against Iraq's new American masters.

"Under Saddam, we did not have the right to either talk or move, and the
United States knew this full well. Why did it take them so long to act?"
asked the imam.

The Shiites' stronghold in Baghdad, known as Saddam City until US forces
took over the capital last week and ended Saddam's 24-year rule, has been
renamed Al-Sadr City in honor of Mohammad Sadeq Al-Sadr, a senior Shiite
authority who was assassinated in 1999 ostensibly by the Saddam regime.

The shantytown of two million people, once barred to journalists by Saddam's
security services and where any hint of dissent was crushed, has turned into
a platform for an emerging political force.

But it is also from the impoverished suburb that looters set out to central
Baghdad to ransack and set on fire the symbols of a state they accuse of
repressing them, but also libraries and museums ‹ indeed the collective
memory of a country from which they felt excluded.

The violence was brought to an end by Shiite leaders only after the point
was made and the message received. Mosque preachers urged the faithful to
return the booty, again demonstrating the authority they wield over the
community.

"We are a people who suffered a lot. Saddam deprived us of everything
including freedom," Sayyed Al-Shawki explained.

"The Iraqis wanted to express their joy (at Saddam's ouster) as well as
their quest for revenge. They later heeded the appeals of religious leaders
and started bringing the stolen goods back to mosques. We will return them
when we will have a democratic government," he said.

As things stand now, the Shiites are not happy with the broad lines of a
settlement spelled out by the administration of US President George W. Bush,
notably apparent plans to give exiled opposition groups a major role.

"We thank the Americans if they came here to liberate us," said Sayyed
Al-Shawki, whose community is dominant in the south of the country.

"But if they are here to colonize us, we will regard them as enemies and
fight them with all means," he warned.

Like other Shiite prayer leaders sounded out in Al-Sadr City in recent days,
the turbaned imam called for a government grouping all of Iraq's major
communities ‹ Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish and even Christian.

But when asked about the ultimate objective of the Shiites' claim to a major
say in the future Iraq, he did not mince his words.

"Our objective is to set up an Islamic state, because this is the supreme
ambition of all Arab and Muslim countries. All Muslim countries would like
to see their governments applying shariah (Islamic law)," he said.

[.....]


http://www.detnews.com/2003/nation/0304/15/a04-137809.htm

*  DISTRICT IN BAGHDAD CLAIMS AUTONOMY
by Hamza Hendawi
Detroit News, from Associated Press, 15th April

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A Baghdad district that is home to 2 million Shiite Muslims
has practically seceded from the rest of Iraq. Led by local clerics, Saddam
City now runs its own police force, hospitals, clinics and food centers.

Saddam City's autonomy, won in the power vacuum left by the fall of Iraq's
government, doesn't bode well for the future of this heterogeneous nation
after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, whose rule held the disparate religious
and ethnic groups together.

Shiites make up about 60 percent of Iraq's 24 million people and more than
half of Baghdad's 5 million residents. In a post-Saddam Iraq, Shiite leaders
say they want a share of power that reflects their numbers, something that
would end the traditional monopoly over political power by Arabs from
Islam's mainstream Sunni sect.

[.....]

In Saddam City, a young cleric ominously hinted Monday that handing back
authority over the densely populated neighborhood to a central government
may be less than certain.

Ali al-Gharawi, 22, also said that he and other Saddam City leaders take
their orders from the "al-hawza al-ilmiyah," the Arabic phrase for the top
Shiite clerics of Najaf.

"I don't think that any central government, if such a body is ever to take
office, will offer comprehensive protection for us," said al-Gharawi, in
reply to a question on whether he and others would relinquish power in
Saddam City when a new central government takes office.

Everything in Saddam City suggests power is firmly in the hands of the
clerics and that the area's mosques are functioning as the centers of power.
There also are many telltale signs that a central, albeit concealed, power
is in existence.

Al-Gharawi, underlining his newly found authority, said he met twice with a
U.S. military commander deployed near Saddam City and won approval for
neighborhood patrols to keep their light arms while on duty.

Raad Ahmed, a Shiite activist sentenced to death in 2002 but released by
Saddam in a mass pardon last fall, said local gunmen have handed over to
U.S. troops five Arab volunteers who came to Iraq to fight U.S. and British
forces.

Notices, signs and graffiti in Saddam City also attest to a government-like
authority.

"Electricity is the property of everyone, so protect it," reads graffiti
outside a power installation. "Dear brother: you can return the state's
looted money here," reads a sign.

Activists say clinics and four hospitals in the area are now run by
volunteers. Food and other items confiscated from looters by patrols
operating under clerical supervision are given to hospitals.

Al-Gharawi said thousands of armed volunteers enforce peace in the area from
dusk to dawn, preventing anyone from leaving or entering Saddam City. On
Monday afternoon, however, armed men manned checkpoints, searching vehicles
and passengers. Other gunmen were deployed on the rooftop of the local
telephone exchange and outside mosques.

Shiites, who have long complained of persecution under Saddam, manifested
the dawn of a new era in the manner they worshipped at a holy shrine on
Monday.

They openly wept over the "martyrdom" of Imam al-Hussein, one of their most
revered saints, and venerated images of him. There was no sign of Saddam's
plainclothes policemen who routinely mingled with worshippers at Shiite
shrines.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,937029,00.html

*  ARMED SHIA ON STREETS IN FIRST SIGN OF POWER TUSSLE
by James Meek in Baghdad
The Guardian, 15th April

Armed groups of Shia citizens, acting on instructions from clerics in the
holy city of Najaf, were attempting to bring order to districts of Baghdad
yesterday.

Shia clerics in Baghdad said they were cooperating with the US authorities
and had no objection to their presence in the city, provided it was
temporary.

But the mobilisation of Shia by the Najaf hierarchy sends a signal to
Washington that an organised alternative power structure already exists in
Iraq, whatever coalition of exiles and local politicians emerges from
meetings this week.

Some local Shia clerics made it clear yesterday that they wanted to see Iraq
become an Islamic republic.

On Sunday the Howza, the conclave of senior Shia clerics based in Najaf,
cranked up its long-established communications system, run underground under
Saddam Hussein, and distributed photocopies of instructions to mosques
across the country bymessenger.

The instructions ordered local clerics and people of authority in their
neighbourhoods to "establish local committees _ to organise the affairs of
the neighbourhood" and to organise all civil and religious activity. "With
the direction of the clerics of Najaf, we want to return this looted stuff
to the people," said Sheik Saad al-Safar, senior imam at the Buratha mosque
in Baghdad, who was directing a checkpoint controlling vehicles. "And, God
willing, we will manage to establish security in all this neighbourhood.

"We've managed to secure the water plants and electricity sub-stations and
all the hospitals in the neighbourhood. The next stage is that we want to
have central control from Najaf over what's happening in the streets."

The emergence of Shia defence committees overshadowed the halting return to
work of elements of Baghdad's city police yesterday. Uniformed officers were
barely visible. One young lieutenant, Abas Adil, had joined Mr Safar's
neighbourhood checkpoint and was dancing madly from car to car in crisp dark
green fatigues with a Kalashnikov in one hand, shouting, scanning documents,
and ordering people in and out of their cars.

At one point, a car refused to stop, and Mr Adil loosed off three rounds
after it as it screeched away down the crowded street. Miraculously, the
shots missed everything except the road surface, and he went back to
checking documents, pretending it hadn't happened.

A couple of times, convoys of US military vehicles drove through, and the
locals stepped aside respectfully. The commander of one Bradley fighting
vehicle did a double take when he saw a man in Iraqi military uniform
standing watching him, carrying a Kalashnikov, but he did not stop or shoot.

Of more significance than the old uniform, perhaps, was a new one - a black
tabard worn by a young man, with the words Volunteers of the Civil Service
hand-painted on it, seen earnestly discussing something with Mr Safar.

Shopkeepers continued to trickle back to work. More fresh food markets
opened, and there was an easing off in looting as religious ordinances,
vigilantes and the sheer lack of anything left to loot in government
buildings took effect.

The single biggest obstacle to a return to anything like normality in
Baghdad is the lack of mains electricity. Marines refused to allow
journalists access to the main power station yesterday, but little groups of
engineers kept turning up at the gate to clock in for the first time since
US troops arrived. One marine said he had heard the power could be restored
within three days. An Iraqi engineer said the problem lay less with the
power station itself than with broken power lines and ruptured natural gas
pipelines which fed the station with fuel.

In the absence of mains power, traffic lights do not work, and gridlock set
in at intersections on the city's approaches as families returned from
refuges in provincial towns and villages. Burnt-out vehicles, abandoned
Iraqi tanks and checkpoints new and old, none of them being cleared, added
to the chaos.

In contrast, in the poor Shia neighbourhood of Saddam City, which some are
now calling Sadr City, after Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, the leading Iraqi Shia
cleric murdered by Saddam, there was an eerie calm yesterday. There, too,
locals have responded to the call from Najaf for devout Shia to organise
themselves and fill the Iraqi leadership vacuum. Outside one mosque several
looted ambulances had been parked, ready to be restored to the hospitals
from which they were stolen.

Sheikh Amir al-Muwamadawi, a cleric at the mosque who occasionally broke off
conversation in the cool carpeted hall to validate old regime documents with
his ecclesiastical ink stamp, described relations between the Iraqis and the
US and British forces as "sensitive".

"Up until now we've been enjoying peaceful relations with coalition forces,
but the British and the Americans would not accept invaders. How could we?"
he said.

"The clergy is taking control of what's happening in the streets, especially
in this neighbourhood and other parts of Baghdad. This control does not
represent love of authority, or a seeking after other gains. We want
security. But there's a point we can't deny, that there is an eagerness to
establish an Islamic state in this country."

Mr Muwamadawi felt Iraq's Islamic state should differ from all other models,
including Iran's, but Mr Safar was more enthusiastic about Iraq's Shia
neighbour to the east.

It is an enthusiasm which will trouble Iraqi Sunnis and the US.


TURBULENT MULLAHS

http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=25014

*  FORMER IRAQI GENERAL NIZAR AL-KHAZARAJI AND ISLAMIC SCHOLAR MAJID
AL-KHOI'I HAVE BOTH BEEN EXECUTED BY IRAQI RESIDENTS OF NAJAF FOR BEING
"AMERICAN STOOGES"
Arab News (Saudi Arabia), 10th April

WORLD EXCLUSIVE: from Arab News War Correspondent in Najaf, Iraq; filed 2 pm
GMT; April 10: Former Iraqi general Nizar Al-Khazaraji and Islamic scholar
Majid Al-Khoi'i have both been executed by Iraqi residents of Najaf,
according to five independent Iraqi witnesses to the incident who spoke to
Arab News. The two potential Iraqi leaders of the city, who were supported
by the US, "were chopped into pieces with swords and knives inside the Ali
Mosque this morning by Iraqis who accused them of being American stooges,"
one of the witnesses said. Another said that a US Special Forces Soldier,
who had been acting as their body guard, was also killed in the incident.
Al-Khoi'i's death has since been confirmed by his family in London. However,
there has been no independent confirmation of Al-Khazarji's death. Arab News
War Correspondent Essam Al-Ghalib says from Najaf that he can confirm only
that local Iraqis were talking about the death of Al-Khazarji, not that the
man had actually been killed.


http://162.42.211.226/article2806.htm (Information Clearing House version)

*  US-BACKED MILITIA TERRORISES TOWN
by Charles Clover in Najaf
Financial Times, 9th April

Hay Al Ansar, on the outskirts of Najaf in Iraq, was glad to be rid of
Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party government, when the city was seized by US
forces last week.

But they appear to be just as terrified, if not more so, of their new rulers
-a little-known Iraqi militia backed by the US special forces and
headquartered in a compound nearby.

The Iraqi Coalition of National Unity (ICNU), which appeared in the city
last week riding on US special forces vehicles, has taken to looting and
terrorising their neighbourhood with impunity, according to most residents.

"They steal and steal," said a man living near the Medresa al Tayif school,
calling himself Abu Zeinab. "They threaten us, saying: 'We are with the
Americans, you can do nothing to us'."

Sa'ida al Hamed, another resident, said she witnessed looting by the ICNU
and other armed gangs in the city, which lost its police force when the
government fled last week. One man told a US army translator on Monday that
he was taken out of his house and beaten by ICNU forces when he refused to
give them his car. They took it anyway.

If true, the testimony of residents reveals a darker side to US policy in
Iraq. In their distaste for peacekeeping and eagerness to hand the ruling of
Iraq back to Iraqis, US forces are in danger of losing the peace as rapidly
as they have won the war.

US special forces said they were looking into the complaints, which had been
passed to them by US military sources. They declined, however, to discuss
the formation of the group, how its members were chosen, or who they were.

The head of the ICNU, who says he is a former colonel in the Iraqi artillery
forces who has been working with the underground opposition since 1996,
announced on Tuesday that he was acting mayor of Najaf, and his group had
taken over administration of the city.

Other Iraqi exiles, brought in by the CIA and US special forces to help
assemble a local government over the next few days, say the militia is out
of control.

"They are nobody, and nobody has ever heard of them, all they have is US
backing," said an Arab journalist.

Abu Zeinab said the ICNU "has no basis in this city, we don't know who they
are". He said the residents, who are predominantly Shia Muslims, followed
only Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, leader of much of the Shia world, who
lives in the city.

Ayatollah Sistani has so far refused to meet representatives of US forces
and has made no public pronouncements on co-operating with the US military.
Associates say he is "waiting for the situation to become clearer".

Hassan Mussawi, a Shia cleric who helps lead the ICNU, said reports of
looting by his group were untrue - fabricated by religious extremists to
discredit his movement.

He said his group was seeking to arrest former Iraqi government officials
and "collaborators" with Mr Hussein's regime.

"If they do not resist arrest we hand them over to the Americans. If they
resist then we take measures accordingly."

The allegations against the ICNU threaten to undermine much of the goodwill
built up by US forces among the citizens of Najaf, who still cheer troops
driving through the city. In an effort to curb rampant looting, US forces
have begun to patrol at night.

They will not be undertaking police functions, but "if we come upon looting,
we will try to control the situation and disperse those doing the looting,"
said Lt Col Marcus De Oliveira, of the 101st Airborne Division.

The city's political rivalries appear to be affecting humanitarian
assistance. US special forces have objected to certain Shia leaders
distributing food aid, for fear of their ties to Iran.

Sixteen truckloads of food from the Kuwait Red Crescent Society is being
distributed according to a ration plan drawn up by the Iraqi Ministry of
Commerce for the United Nation's oil for food programme.

US forces are also trying to get running water and power returned to the
city, by bringing in a 2.5MW generator from Kuwait to restart the city's
power plant, which was shut off by Iraqi forces.

Hussein Chilabi, father of a family of six in Chilabat, on the outskirts of
Najaf, said that until running water was restored, his family would have to
drink from canals. "The children are sick in their stomachs from drinking
this water. We need running water more than food, more than anything right
now."


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=396050

*  MURDERED IN A MOSQUE: THE CLERIC WHO WENT HOME TO ACT AS A PEACEMAKER
by Cahal Milmo
The Independent, 11th April

The 12 years of exile in Kilburn, in north-west London could not have
prepared him for this. Abdul Majid al-Khoei had lived quietly there, running
a charitable religious foundation.

He took part in polite interfaith dialogues. He was one of a number of
Muslim leaders who met Tony Blair to offer advice on Islamic sensitivities
to foster good race relations, at home and abroad.

Nothing in that could have hinted of what would happen yesterday ­ that he
would be hacked to death by a crowd at one of Islam's holiest shrines.

It was, by terrible irony, the shrine holding the silver-covered tomb of
Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, who is honoured by Muslims as
the first Islamic martyr. And now martyrdom came to Mr Khoei, who had
returned to Iraq from exile in Britain only two weeks ago to act as a peace
broker for Allied forces and help rebuild his country.

Mr Khoei, whose father was the pre-eminent spiritual leader of the Shia
Muslim community in Iraq, was slain inside the Ali Mosque in Najaf, the
third most sacred site for the world's 120 million Shias.

Witnesses said Mr Khoei, who had four children, was dragged outside the
building and set upon by attackers armed with knives and swords. He tried to
defend himself by firing his gun.

As bullets and insults flew, it took just moments for simmering tensions
within Najaf's Shia community to explode into a killing.

The reasons for the killing remained unclear last night. Some said that Mr
Khoei was the target of a political assassination by Saddam Hussein
loyalists. Others said he had been caught up in a revenge attack on a
cleric, reviled for his connections to the Iraqi regime, who was also
killed.

The murders took place shortly after 10am as Iraq's leading Shia mullahs
gathered for a meeting to decide control of the shrine, which had been
occupied by Iraqi gunmen during fighting for Najaf.

Mr Khoei had arrived for the gathering with Haider al-Kadar, the imam who
had been in charge of the mosque and was widely disliked as a member of
President Saddam's Ministry of Religion. Their joint arrival was a gesture
of reconciliation, according to Mr Khoei's supporters.

Ali Assayid Haider, a mullah who had travelled from the southern city of
Basra for the meeting, said: "People attacked and killed both of them inside
the mosque."

There were fears that the incident could trigger in-fighting among Iraq's
Shias, who make up 60 per cent of the population.

Mr Khoei had returned to his hometown of Najaf on 3 April after answering
the call for volunteers among exiled Iraqis to act as intermediaries for
American and British forces.

He was last week credited with preventing a disastrous confrontation between
US soldiers and Shias in Najaf when a group of 100 Marines passed close to
the Ali mosque. Mr Khoei calmed the crowd by using a loud-hailer to deny
that the Americans were going to enter the mosque as the troops backed away,
their guns pointing to the ground.

Friends of the cleric said that he was also keen to assert his independence
and had assumed a prominent spiritual role, seeking to calm tensions not
only between the foreign troops and local Shias anxious to safeguard the
sanctity of their holy places but also between rival factions. He said last
week that he and other local clerics were trying to negotiate a deal in
which hardcore loyalists would be given safe passage out of the city.

Speaking last week, Mr Khoei said: "For me, to be back after so long, made
me full of mixed emotions. I was very happy to be home, but it's also very
sad to see people in such a pitiful state. When I left it was a beautiful
country, now everyone looks poor with no shoes and ragged clothes."

Reports from those accompanying the cleric suggested that the presence of Mr
Kadar in the mosque had sparked an insult from followers of a faction loyal
to another Shia mullah, named as Mohammed Braga al Saddar. Adil Adnan
al-Moussawi, who was inside the building, said: "Kadar was an animal. The
people were shouting they hate him, that he should not be here."

Mr Khoei was seen to pull out a gun. Conflicting witness accounts said he
fired bullets into the air and also into the crowd. Whatever happened, the
events that followed were savage: Mr Khoei suffered a gunshot wound inside
the mosque. As the crowd descended on the two men and dragged them outside,
they were cut down by attackers.

In London, aides said they believed the killing was an assassination
orchestrated by "members of the regime".

A spokesman for Al-Khoei Foundation: "We believe this was politically
motivated ­ the actions of those within Saddam Hussein's regime who have
targeted us."

Sheikh Fazel al-Haidari, a dissident Shia cleric in Iraq, added: "We should
not assume Saddam and his Baath party are finished." The killings followed
reports that a militia, backed by the American military, had been looting
homes and businesses in Najaf. Residents claimed that the US-trained Iraqi
Coalition of National Unity was taking control of the city in defiance of
the allegiance of much of its population to the man who succeeded Mr Khoei's
father, the Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani, to whom Mr Khoei was a
key aide. The US military claimed earlier that the Ayatollah had urged Shias
not to attack Allied forces in Iraq. Mr Khoei was among the most prominent
of Iraq's exiles and obvious target for anyone seeking to gain a grip on
Najaf.

His father, the Grand Ayatollah Abulqasim al-Khoei, was the highest Shia
religious authority in Iraq at the time of the uprising against President
Saddam in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. The failure of that rebellion
forced the cleric to flee to Britain. Many of his relatives were murdered.
His father died under house arrest in 1992.

Other sources suggested that the reason for yesterday's killing was due to
intense suspicion of Mr Khoei's rapid return to Iraq with the backing of
United States, sparking criticism from other Shia factions keen to assert
their authority.

Supporters of Mr Khoei had said that he had been given authority by the
Americans to administer Najaf, a city of 500,000.

It was left to supporters of Mr Khoei last night to point to the bitter
irony of the words used by him to pacify his countrymen a few days earlier:
"I said that I was an Iraqi who had been forced to leave but I had returned
­ a sign that things were now getting better and they were safe."


http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/11/1049567845189.html

*  CROWD HACK TO DEATH MUSLIM CLERICS
The Age (Australia), from AP, 11th April

A crowd rushed and hacked to death two Shi'ite Muslim clerics - one a Saddam
Hussein loyalist, the other a returning exile who had urged support for US
troops - during a meeting today meant to forge reconciliation at one of
Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines, witnesses said.

An unknown number of people were injured in the melee at the Ali Mosque, one
of the holiest shrines for Shi'ite Muslims.

"People attacked and killed both of them inside the mosque," said Ali
Assayid Haider, a mullah who had travelled from the southern city of Basra
for the meeting of religious leaders.

Reporters were taken by the US military to witness the meeting, which was
meant to show a spirit of reconciliation and openness among religious
leaders in US-held Najaf. However, the group arrived late in Najaf, and the
killings had already taken place.

The shrine had been under the control of the widely disliked Haider
al-Kadar, a Saddam loyalist connected to his Ministry of Religion.

In a gesture of reconciliation, al-Kadar was accompanied to the meeting by
Abdul Majid al Khoei, a high-ranking Shi'ite cleric and son of one of the
religion's most prominent ayatollahs, or spiritual leaders. He had just
returned a week ago from exile in London to help restore order in the city.

When the two men appeared at the shrine, members of another faction loyal to
a different mullah, Mohammed Baqer al-Sadr, verbally assailed al-Kadar,
furious that he was there.

"Al-Kadar was an animal," said Adil Adnan al-Moussawi, 25, who witnessed the
confrontation. "Everybody was afraid of him. The people were shouting that
they hated him, that he should not be there."

Apparently feeling threatened, and wanting to defend his fellow cleric,
al-Khoei pulled a gun and fired one or two shots. There were conflicting
accounts over whether he fired the bullets into the air, or at the crowd.

Both men were then rushed by the crowd and hacked to death with swords and
knives, the witnesses said.

First word of the incident came when US military vehicles carrying the
visiting journalists tried to approach the area of the mosque and were
stopped by crowds who warned them that fighting had occurred and to stay
away for their own safety.

Journalists later approached the mosque from another angle on foot. The
structure, decorated with a gold dome and minarets and ornate tiling, stands
above the dust and squalor of Najaf, where goats and donkeys share streets
with beat-up cars, barefoot children and women in black.

The journalists did not enter the mosque but saw bloodstains on the a
sidewalk outside. A fire truck eventually pulled up, apparently to clean up
the mess, and one man told the crowd to disperse.

US special forces mounted an investigation late in the day to determine what
happened, said Captain Townley Hedrick.

"I think it remains to be seen what actually happened," said Major Dave
Andersen, spokesman for the US Marines. "But this will be a challenge for
Iraq itself and the sects inside it to coexist and basically come to some
kind of agreement or unity."

[.....]


http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=0HK5JSBQV4B2WCR
BAELCFFA?type=worldNews&storyID=258696

*  SIEGE OF IRAQI CLERIC ENDS - AIDE
by Mehrdad Balali and Esmat Salaheddin
Reuters, 13th April

KUWAIT (Reuters) - An armed siege of the home of a Shi'ite Muslim spiritual
leader in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf has ended and tribal leaders are in
control of the city, an aide to the cleric says.

The tribal leaders entered the city to protect Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani
after his home was surrounded on Saturday by armed men demanding he leave
Iraq within 48 hours or face attack, Mohammad Baqir al-Mohri told Reuters in
Kuwait.

Sistani, who is in his seventies, was not in the house at the time but his
son was, the aide said.

"The siege has ended," Mohri said. "The tribal leaders are now in control of
the city."

"When the tribes arrived, the armed men had already left. Mr Sistani was not
in the house. Nobody has seen him."

The standoff at the heart of the Shi'ite community augured ill for national
unity after the U.S.-led war to topple Saddam Hussein and set alarm bells
ringing across the region.

Kuwait-based Ayatollah Abulqasim Dibaji told Reuters on Sunday that
Sistani's house was surrounded by members of Jimaat-e-Sadr-Thani, a shadowy
group led by Moqtada Sadr, the 22-year-old son of a late spiritual leader in
Iraq.

But Sistani's aide said Moqtada, who was no longer in Najaf, had sent him a
message denying any involvement.

Associates of Moqtada have also said he had no link with the siege or the
killing on Thursday in the city's main shrine of senior cleric Abdul Majid
al-Khoei, who had just returned from exile.

Some Shi'ite sources said U.S. troops stationed on the outskirts of Najaf
had entered the city to help restore order, but Sistani's aide said they had
avoided getting involved in the dispute.

The U.S. military had no immediate comment.

[.....]


http://www.dailystar.com.lb/14_04_03/art19.asp

*  SHIITE CLERIC ORDERED TO LEAVE IRAQ
by Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Lebanon Daily Star, 14th April

BEIRUT: Following the assassination of cleric Abdul-Majid al-Khoei in Iraq
Thursday, inter Shiite rivalry continued as a group of armed Shiites
demanded Sunday that top cleric Ali Sistani leave the country by Tuesday, or
face attack.

"We are investing intensive efforts and making contacts with Shiite factions
around the world to try to defuse this problem, protect Sayyed (Sistani) and
let him remain in Najaf," Mourtada Kashmiri, Sistani's representative told
The Daily Star in a phone interview from London.

Followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, son of late cleric Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr who
was assassinated in 1999, surrounded Sistani's house and ordered him to
leave saying that he was an Iranian and had no right to lead the Iraqi
Shiite community. Sadr's group was also accused of murdering Khoei in Najaf
last week.

Iraqi Shiite sources in Beirut told The Daily Star that upon instigation of
former Baathists, 22-year-old Moqtada al-Sadr is trying to unify Shiites of
southern Iraq under his command and lead them to resist American presence in
the country.

Like other Shiite clerics such as Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, head of the
Tehran-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI),
Sistani maintained a neutral stance on the US invasion of Iraq.

Sistani, 73, was born in Iran and completed his religious studies in the
town of Najaf.

He received his degree in ijtihad, religious scholarship, in the 1960s from
late cleric Abul Qassem al-Khoei, the father of assassinated Abdul-Majid.
After the death of Abul-Qassem in 1992, Sistani became the top Shiite cleric
in Iraq.

On Sunday, his home in Najaf was surrounded by a group of armed Shiites who
ordered him to leave Iraq within a 48-hour deadline trying to undermine the
legitimacy of his Iraqi leadership by saying that he was an Iranian.

"It is a group of chaotic people threatening the Sayyed (Sistani) out of
their ignorance," Kashmiri argued, saying supporters of the former Iraqi
regime might be behind the instigation of this group.

Another group, also reportedly from the followers of Sadr, surrounded the
house of Mohammed Said al-Hakim, the nephew of SCIRI's leader, asking him to
leave Iraq.

"We don't have relations with Sadr," said Kashmiri. Sadr is a relative of
late Mohammed Baqer al-Sadr, the founder of the Islamic Daawa Party (IDP)
which was heavily persecuted during the early years of the Baath rule in
Iraq.

"We plead to the sons of the two Sadr martyrs to defuse this at a time when
we are in dire need of unifying our rank and file," said IDP's spokesman
Ibrahim Jaafari Sunday in a statement on the party's website.

Lebanese leading Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who was
close to IDP's founder, was the first cleric to call on Iraqis to resist the
presence of American groups in their country.

When asked about Sistani's stance on the American presence in Iraq, Kashmiri
said, "Our position is that of the Muslims around the world." He added,
"Iraq should be ruled by Iraqis and there is no need for Americans to stay."

Kashmiri confirmed that Sistani did not issue any fatwa urging Shiites to
resist US forces.

Meanwhile, the United States called for a meeting of all opposition factions
in Nasiriyah Tuesday. The American call prompted mixed reactions from Iraqi
Shiite groups.

While IDP refused to attend the meeting on the grounds that "an American
general called for it," SCIRI also expressed its "reservations" for the same
reason, reported the IDP website.

SCIRI participated in previous opposition conferences in London, and
Salahiddin in northern Iraq but IDP boycotted them. The SCIRI decision to
skip the Nasiriyah meeting reflected a growing distance between Hakim and
American proteges in the Iraqi opposition.

With SCIRI, IDP and al-Sadr boycotting the opposition meeting, followers of
late Abdul Majid al-Khoei are expected to represent the Shiites.


http://www.dailystar.com.lb/15_04_03/art1.asp

*  LOCAL SHIITE CLERICS CONDEMN TENSION IN NAJAF
by Elie Hourani and Mohammed Zaatari
Lebanon Daily Star, 15th April

Lebanon's Shiite clerics on Monday condemned the current tension in Najaf,
an important Shiite religious center, and called on the allied forces to
protect it.

One of the leading religious leaders, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, had been under
house arrest by 50 armed pro-Iranian Iraqis since Saturday, who had demanded
that the cleric leave Iraq within 48 hours.

A Kuwaiti Shiite cleric said that several tribal chiefs from the Euphrates
area had intervened and put an end to the ayatollah's captivity.

The group of armed men were reportedly from the same group which had
brutally killed pro Western Shiite cleric Sayyed Abdel-Majid Khoei in Najaf
on Thursday.

The vice-president of the Shiite Higher Council in Lebanon, Sheikh
Abdel-Amir Qabalan, played down reports about tension in Najaf.

Speaking to a group of Shiite clerics who gathered at the Higher Shiite
Council to discuss the latest developments in Najaf, including leading
cleric Mohammed Ibrahim Amin and other clerics from Lebanon and abroad,
Qabalan called on all Shiites to work together for the good of their common
cause.

He added that Lebanon's Shiites wanted Iraq united without clashes between
the Shiites and the Sunni, or among Muslims and non-Muslims.

"We call upon our brethren in Najaf to defend the religious authorities,
Ayatollah Sistani and Mohammed Said Hakim, and other religious authorities
in Najaf," Qabalan said, stressing the closeness of the links between
Lebanese Shiites and Najaf.

Qabalan called on Shiite religious leaders to join hands and urged all
Iraqis to unite for the country's benefit.

Qabalan said that the gathering of ulema was aimed at condemning what was
going on in Iraq, especially in Najaf.

"We are totally opposed to the invasion forces remaining in Iraq and we call
on all Iraqis, Arabs, Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis to work together," Qabalan
said.

He said that he had confirmed reports that Sistani had been "besieged and
physically assaulted" and called on trouble-makers in Najaf to "calm down
and safeguard your religious leader."

Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah said in a newspaper
interview, published on Monday, that Shiites did not expect a dominant role
in post-war Iraq and the United States would leave Sunni Muslims in power.

Shiites make up more than half of Iraq's population but were systematically
kept out of power by Iraq's successive governments.

"We are not calling for the establishment of a Shiite state, nor for
domination of Shiites over others, because this is not realistic," Fadlallah
was quoted as telling the French daily Le Figaro.

"I don't think the United States, especially under pressure from its Arab
allies, would want to change the color of the regime. It will remain Sunni,
with greater rights granted to Shiites."

Fadlallah had previously called on Iraqis to reject any American governor or
US-based administration set up to run Iraq immediately after the war, which
ended Saddam Hussein's 24-year rule last week.

However, he told Le Figaro that "it is hard to face up to a coalition led by
the world's most powerful state."

Sheikh Afif Nabulsi, who is close to both Hizbullah and Iran, called on the
groups of trouble makers in Iraq to "stop bothering religious leaders."

Speaking from the Sidon-based Zahraa complex, where he held a news
conference attended by dozens of Shiite clerics, he accused "the crazy mob
in Najaf of fishing in troubled waters in Iraq."

Nabulsi warned them against any "trouble or strife that could undermine
Najaf's history."

He called on international authorities to step in quickly in defense of
Shiite religious leaders in Najaf and said he held the United States
responsible for any harm the religious leaders incur.

Nabulsi mentioned the Iraqi regime more than once, replacing the term US
invasion with "the US enemy."

When he was pressed by journalists to explain why he had not called on the
Iraqi Shiites to resist the allied forces in Iraq, Nabulsi said he had
already "called on the Iraqi people and those Iraqis who are living abroad
to be the opponents of the Americans," and to fight against what he called
the "US community."

He warned that if any of the Shiite religious leaders are harmed, "we shall
have a stronger and different attitude."

Sources close to Nabulsi said that his address was developed in conjunction
with several Shiite religious centers in Lebanon.

The sources said that he was holding the remaining followers of Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein and the allied forces to blame for any harm that
could happen to religious leaders in Najaf.

The sources said that Nabulsi's attitude reflected the Iranian religious
leadership and reflected Hizbullah's attitude concerning the assaults on
Najaf's clerics.

Najaf's religious authority has been challenged by that of Qom, Iran's
religious capital, since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Most Lebanese
Shiites follow the teachings of Najaf's clerics, but some, including
Hizbullah adhere to Qom's religious scholarship.

Beirut MP Nasser Qandil also played down the threats facing the holy Shiite
city of Najaf.

Speaking to reporters after conferring with Fadlallah, Qandil said that the
cleric had said the latest reports on the situation in Najaf were blown out
of proportion.

"Our relatives and ulema will overcome these passing crises," Qandil said.




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