Week lays bare a murderous sectarian rage

BAGHDAD -- The wave of sectarian violence that gripped Iraq last week reenergized the country's Shi'ite Muslim militias, exposed the weakness of the country's leaders while highlighting the strength of clerics, and left the United States scrambling to unify the divided government.

Altogether, the events that followed the destruction of a historic Shi'ite shrine in Samarra on Wednesday brought Iraq to the edge of civil war and laid bare a murderous sectarian rage that has bubbled just under the surface for more than a year. Now, the rival ethnic and religious factions deadlocked over formation of a government face the task of finding common ground while staving off another catastrophic tide of violence.

''Efforts to provoke civil war will not end with this attack on Askariya shrine," US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters last night. ''We are not out of danger."

Khalilzad said terrorist provocateurs were ''probably trying to find other targets" to further inflame sectarian tensions. ''This attack has had a major impact here, getting everyone's attention that Iraq is in danger," he said.

Like Iraqi politicians, who until last week had avoided even using the words ''civil war," Khalilzad has addressed the crisis with bluntness, calling the events of past week a turning point.

Yesterday, renewed violence left about 60 people dead, and Iraqi officials extended an extraordinary curfew that banned car traffic for most of the day yesterday and all day today in Baghdad. Residents of the capital scrambled yesterday to stock up food between 4 and 8 p.m., the brief period during which the curfew was lifted.

''If there is a civil war in this country, it will never end," Defense Minister Sadoun Dulaimi, the only senior Sunni in the Shi'ite-dominated government, said yesterday. ''We are ready to fill the streets with armored vehicles."

From the halls of power in Baghdad's Green Zone, where government officials struggled to contain the crisis, to the tense streets throughout the country, Iraqis from all sects and walks of life were left wondering whether civil war could be thwarted.

In the Sunni stronghold of Aadhamiya, a Baghdad neighborhood that both US troops and Iraqi government forces shy away from because of insurgent strength there, a worried crowd assembled at Friday prayers to contemplate the new political landscape.

Not since the 13th century, when Mongols sacked Baghdad, have Iraq's Sunnis faced such an assault on their community and houses of worship, Imam Ahmed Hassan al-Samaraei told worshippers at the Abu Hanifa mosque.

''These events serve only the enemies of Islam, Iraq, and the people of Iraq," said Samaraei. ''The Iraqi people should not be dragged into this sectarian war."

Since Wednesday, when the golden dome of the Samarra shrine was blasted into a pile of rubble, hundreds of retaliatory attacks have been reported. Sunni groups assert that dozens of members and supporters have been murdered and that hundreds of mosques have been attacked.

Both Iraqi government and US officials dispute those reports. The spokesman for the US military in Iraq, Major General Rick Lynch, said yesterday that US forces investigated at least 25 reports of mosque attacks that proved false. and that since Wednesday only 22 mosques had been attacked.

According to US military figures, 119 civilians were killed since Wednesday. The Iraqi government and Sunni groups put the number of deaths at more than 200.

''There have been pockets of violence, but we don't see that as a precursor to civil war," Lynch said.

Interior Minister Bayan Jabr -- considered by Sunnis to be the power behind one of the most feared Shi'ite militias, the Badr Corps of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq -- said the government would arrest member of the news media and others who ''incite sectarianism" and spread false information about attacks.

Still, over the television stations, in the mosques and political party offices, Shi'ite leaders repeated reports of Sunni terrorists killing Shi'ites, while Sunni leaders tallied a constantly growing number of retribution attacks against Sunnis, including death squad murders and mosque takeovers. Even the US military and Iraqi Army have reported instances of death-squad killings, but the extent of the phenomenon is not known.

''Bodies were found blindfolded in mass graves," Samaraei, the imam said, adding that 80 Sunnis were murdered in the first 48 hours after the shrine was destroyed. ''The prime minister is a Muslim, and he will be held to account on Judgment Day. He must protect the blood, honor, and treasure of the people."

The top demand by Sunni leaders is for the Shi'ite-dominated government, perceived as unfair and sectarian, to disband the Shi'ite militias. The US ambassador emphasized last week that the crisis provides an opportunity for the government to rein in the fighters.

Other than the amorphous insurgency, the greatest rivals to the government security forces are the two major Shi'ite militias. One is the Mahdi Army, loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and comprised of legions of young men with little military discipline or training but a publicly sworn readiness to die. The other is the Badr Corps, a more seasoned fighting force commanded by one of the most powerful Shi'ite Islamist political parties and suspected of being behind the death squads that target Sunnis and former Ba'athists.

Lynch, the US military spokesman, warned that ''now is not the time" to move against the militias.

Experience suggests that any overt confrontation with the Mahdi Army or the Badr Corps could lead to the kind of deadly warfare that the US military encountered in Najaf and Sadr City repeatedly in 2004 and could provoke the kind of civil unrest that has destabilized Basra and other Shi'ite militia-run cities in the British-occupied south.

Complicating the picture has been the central role clerics have played in the recent crisis. Although Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shi'ite, and President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, called for calm immediately after the shrine attack, the violence only began to subside after leading clerics got involved.

More Iraqis appeared to be turning to their imams, rather than the government, for guidance. In Najaf, the seat of Shi'ite religious power, the imam at the holiest shrine in the Shi'ite world appealed for calm in a Friday sermon, trying to assign blame for the Samarra attack on foreigners eager to exacerbate sectarian strife.

''We have to insist on building Iraq, rejecting foreign intervention," the imam, Sadr al-Din al-Qabinji, said. He also lashed out at Khalilzad, who is a Sunni Muslim of Afghan origin, calling him a sectarian.

In the Shi'ite stronghold of Sadr City on Baghdad's edge, Sheikh Salah al-Ubeidi blamed the United States for promoting sectarian strife and said that Sunnis and Shi'ites together should unite against the US occupation and not fall into conflict.

But just a few miles away, Mahdi Army loyalists had occupied a major Sunni mosque beside a Baghdad highway, hanging a banner giving the mosque a new, Shi'ite name and threatening passersby with machine guns.

US diplomats have found themselves in a double bind. On one side, they have had to defend themselves from allegations by Shi'ite Islamist parties that Washington is pressuring the Iraqi politicians who have been most supportive of the occupation, questioning them about death squads and police torture while ignoring equal or worse offenses committed by Sunni insurgents.

At the same time, Washington's envoy here has had to repeatedly lobby the government for Sunni demands, like the initial request for a curfew, since there are few Sunni voices at the highest levels.

US diplomats said that Iraqis still consider them ''honest brokers" in the sectarian negotiations, but that future crises will be resolved peacefully only if Iraqis can agree on a government that fully represents Sunni Arabs as well as Shi'ites and Kurds.

''It's very important to recognize that efforts by terrorists and enemies of Iraq to promote civil war will continue, but efforts to defeat them must continue," Khalilzad said.

Globe correspondent Sa'ad al-Izzi contributed to this report from Baghdad. Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com.