Religious leaders raise specter of an 'intifadah'
BAGHDAD -- Religious leaders yesterday used a dreaded word -- "intifadah," or popular uprising -- to describe the nationwide clashes with occupation troops that began Sunday and continued yesterday evening.
Lieutenants of the Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose followers sparked the fighting, have pointedly invited members of rival Muslim sects, as well as Iraqi nationalists, to resist alongside them, and turn what had been relatively contained resistance to the US occupation into a genuinely national revolt.
If Sunni Muslims, Wahabbi extremists, and Iraqi nationalists heed that call -- as appeared the case in some Baghdad neighborhoods yesterday -- it could create a disastrous scenario for US officials.
"This is an intifadah," said Sheikh Abdul Jabbar al-Hosai, a comparatively moderate Sadr representative who speaks fluent English. "You see the followers of Sadr rising up in Basra, Najaf, Nasiriyah, Baghdad. Even the police are joining us."
Already, the United States has its hands full with the insurgency raging in the Sunni triangle, with its epicenter in Fallujah. It's unclear how the US-led occupation would handle fighting on a second front, if the uprising in the Shi'ite south persists.
And if the two movements merge into a single battle of national resistance, it could portend disaster for US officials here, who hope for a smooth transfer of power to Iraqis on June 30.
This week's events also threaten to overtake the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, a 25-member body that is supposed to shepherd Iraq to independence. Since the signing of an interim constitution last month, the Governing Council had taken on the contours of a real political force, but now seems to be groping to stay relevant.
Some members lined up to condemn the US response to the attacks and demonstrations. But it appeared the vast majority of Iraqis were taking their cues not from their politicians' statements on television, but from Islamic religious leaders, who spread their orders through a well-organized hierarchy of mosques and neighborhood offices.
There were reports that members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps turned on the US Army trainees in Shuala neighborhood, and that Iraqi police in Sadr City and Khadamiya had joined ranks with Mahdi fighters. Coalition officials said they did not have enough information to confirm or deny the reports.
Major General Martin Dempsey, commander of the First Armored Division, said his forces are asking a key question: "Was this a military engagement or a popular uprising? Because how you respond has everything to do with that."
He said ordinary people in Sadr City did not appear to widely support the attacks. Some pulled wounded soldiers to safety, he said. He also said militiamen ordered people to stay in their houses, in some cases locking people in.
US troops are "scouring the hospitals" to determine how many Iraqis were killed in Sadr City and whether they were fighters.
US commanders realize that their aggressive response will be welcomed only if they are seen as stamping out a dangerous gang rather than crushing a popular revolt. "If we can get rid of the Mahdi Army now, the Iraq of July 1 will be better off," a senior US military official said yesterday. "Unless there's some popular sympathy gained from these events, and then we'll be worse off."
Occupation officials, as well as Iraqi politicians with a stake in the June 30 handover, have moved quickly to portray Sadr's followers as a militant minority.
"We asked Moqtada [al-Sadr] to stop resorting to violence, occupying public buildings and other actions that make him an outlaw," an aide to Mohammad Bahr al-Uloum, one of the most influential Shi'ites on the Governing Council, told Reuters. "He insists on staying on the same course that could destroy the nation."
A senior US Central Command official, speaking to reporters from Tampa, told reporters yesterday that the Mahdi attacks amounted to a power grab by a fringe cleric with minimal, if ferocious, support. But it is potentially destabilizing, the official said, because it comes during the week of Arbayeen, which is expected to draw as many as 3 million Shi'ite pilgrims to the holy city of Karbala by Saturday. Thousands have begun marching from hundreds of miles away.
"Certainly the numbers don't suggest even the hint of a Shia uprising," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "This is not the beginnings of a civil war, in our view."
In their public statements, Sadr aides seemed to make a conscious effort to appeal to Sunnis and moderate Shi'ites. One aide declared Sadr was acting on his own, and not taking orders from the ayatollahs in neighboring Iran's theocratic government.
Mahmoud Sudani, Sadr's office manager in Baghdad, said US actions were "not only against Sadr followers, it's against all of the Iraqis. All the Iraqi people are targets."
American helicopter gunfire torched the Shuala restaurant belonging to Sa'ad Abd Bokheet, 55, when the bullets ignited two barrels of fuel oil. But Bokheet, despite the damage provoked by a Sadr demonstration in which he had no part, did not direct his anger at the United States.
"This is not the proper time for an intifadah," he said, standing by a burnt and gutted chicken roaster.
But, he warned, the uprising engulfing his neighborhood could ruin the future for people like himself, who are "just trying to earn a living."
"If the Americans can't control it, it will spread," he said. "I'm afraid for the country."
Globe correspondents Sa'ad al-Izzi and Samir al-Jabouri contributed. Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com. Barnard can be reached at abarnard
@globe.com. 
