Arab News Blog

Despite Republican senator John McCain’s conviction that “We’ve already won that one,” i.e. the Iraq War, actually you couldn’t say either that the war is over or that things are going well politically in that country. It lacks a new government, the political wrangling is interminable, the apparatus of state is paralyzed, and big bombings are undertaken with frightening efficiency.

Two bombings by guerrillas killed at least 40 Shiite pilgrims and wounded 68 in the holy city of Karbala, where hundreds of thousands of devotees had gathered to commemorate the hidden Twelfth Imam, who this branch of Shiism holds will return in the future as a sort of messiah figure (analogous to the return of Christ for many Christians). The time and place of the bombing made it especially dangerous for Iraq’s inter-sectarian politics. Karbala is sacred ground for Shiites, the burial place of the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, Imam Husayn, who was killed by the Muslim Umayyad dynasty in 680 CE (AD) and so is considered the supreme martyr. A big bombing in Karbala reverberates throughout Shiite Iraq and among Shiites everywhere. In February of 2006, when guerrillas blew up the golden dome shrine of Imam Hasan al-Askari (a descendant of both the Prophet and of Imam Husayn), the 11th Imam and father of the Twelfth Imam, Iraq descended into an orgy of sectarian violence that killed as many as 2500 civilians a month.

Al-Khaleej reports that the two bombs were set off at the city gate, distant from the Shrine of Husayn.

Also on Monday, the offices of the al-Arabiya satellite television news network were bombed, killing 6 persons and wounding a member of parliament from the secular Iraqiya list of Iyad Allawi, Salam al-Zawbaie. The al-Arabiya offices are near to the Iraqiya headquarters.

The bombings may have been intended as interventions in the political wrangling about the formation of a new government, something that still has not happened all these months after the March 7 election. (In Iraq’s parliamentary system, they hold the election first, then see who has enough seats to form a government; so far no one has put together a viable coalition, unlike what happened in Britain recently, where the election did not yield a majority party but the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats managed to form a government together despite their significant ideological differences.)

Big bombings in Karbala make Shiite caretaker prime minister Nuri al-Maliki look weak and ineffective, undermining his claim to a second term, which is based in part on his partial successes in restoring some security to major cities such as Basra and Baghdad.

The bombing of al-Arabiya, in the vicinity of the Iraqiya Party, may have been a strike at Sunni Arab interests (al-Arabiya is based in the United Arab Emirates and is sympathetic to moderate Sunni Arabs in Iraq).

Leaders of the major parties are said to be planning to meet in Baghdad, including Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Alliance, Iyad Allawi of the secular Iraqiya Party (mainly voted for this time by Sunni Arabs), Nuri al-Maliki of the middle class Shiite State of Law Coalition, and cleric Muqtada al-Sadr of the fundamentalist Shiite Sadr Bloc. Al-Sadr is said to prefer not to meet al-Maliki face to face. A parliamentary session is also planned to discuss the prerogatives of al-Maliki’s caretaker government, which remains in power 5 months after the election, given the constitutional crisis and relative power vacuum (parliament has not been meeting regularly in the absence of a new government). One plan is to strip al-Maliki’s caretaker government of many of its prerogatives, allowing it only to deliver government services.

The problem is that the army reports to al-Maliki and neither may be interested in what parliament thinks. Nor is it clear that what Iraq needs at this point is a weaker caretaker government.

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The 40th day mourning ceremonies after the commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Husayn (the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad) in 680 CE was marred by bombings in both Iraq and Pakistan. This violence on the terrain of sacred space and sacred time marked a regional low-intensity war between Shiite revivalists and Sunni vigilante extremists. In Iraq, the Shiites came to power in the wake of the US overthrow of the secular, Arab nationalist (and Sunni-tinged) regime of Saddam Hussein, and are being resisted by radical Sunni Arabs, whether religious or secular. In Pakistan, the Taliban in the northwest Pashtun areas are hyper-Sunni and have often attacked Shiites. The current president, Asaf Ali Zardari, is a nominal Shiite, and many Shiites support the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). It is the center-left PPP that has authorized massive military operations against the ultra-Sunni Taliban in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan.

In Iraq, the Sunni radicals attacked pilgrims pouring into the holy city of Karbala south of Baghdad, the site of Imam Husayn’s tomb. A car bomb blew up among a throng of pilgrims, and than they were subjected to a further mortar attack. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that as many as 41 persons were killed and about 150 wounded in the attacks, though exact statistics were hard to come by in the chaos. The atrocity came after a bomb killed 22 pilgrims on Tuesday.

According to al-Zaman, Shiite authorities claimed that “10 million” pilgrims had packed into the shrine city and environs over the past 5 days, 100,000 of them “Arabs and foreigners.” Personally, I don’t find an estimate of more than a million pilgrims for Arba’in (the 40th-day mourning ceremonies) plausible. During the official pilgrimage to Mecca, about 2 million persons come from all over the world. Moreover, Shiism is a minority branch of Islam, encompassing about 10%. And the 40th-day observations are not as central as Ashura, the day of Imam Husayn’s martyrdom.

In any case, Shiites in Karbala seemed more resigned than revengeful, according the anonymous NYT reporter in Karbala.

In the major southern port of Karachi in Pakistan, guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb as a busfull of pilgrims went by, as well as attacking a hospital, killing 22. The guerrillas followed the wounded pilgrims to the hospital and attacked them again there. Karachi has been filled with sectarian tensions since early January.

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Religious passions, guerrilla attacks, and politics marred Christmas Eve in Iraq, as the Shiite holy day of Ashura also approaches on Sunday. A wave of bombings targeting churches or Shiite mourning sessions struck throughout the country Thursday and Friday, killing 27 and wounding over 100.

The biggest attack, in the Shiite city of Hilla, killed a member of the provincial council allied politically with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, along with 14 others.

In East Baghdad, a bombing targeted a mourning session of Shiite Muslims, killing 5. There was also an inflammatory bombing in the holy city of Karbala, site of Husayn’s martyrdom, which killed 1 and wounded 12.

In Mosul, 5 churches have been bombed, and a Christian youth was shot down Thursday morning

Many Christian churches have canceled Chrismas mass because of security concerns, including the Chaldean archdiocese of Kirkuk.

Some Christians fear that religious passions are high among Shiite Muslims at this time, because the latter mourn the killing of their beloved Imam Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in the month of Muharram, which recently began. Dec. 27 is Ashura, the primary mourning date.

But the attacks on Christians and Shiites are both likely emanating from Salafi Sunni extremists, who are fighting a rearguard battle against the Sunni Arab loss of power in Iraq at the hands of Christians and Shiites. (It is unfair to associate Iraqi Christians with the Americans, since theirs is among the older Christian churches in the Middle East and predates Islam in Iraq, but the Salafis are still playing symbolic politics by equating Christianity with the imperialist West. As a result, Iraq’s Christian population has fallen from 800,000 to 400,000 and is in danger of disappearing altogether, as Iraqi Christians flee to Syria).

Some Iraqi newspapers blamed the government for being unable to stop the attacks, though in fact security is pretty tight in Iraq at the moment. In past Muharrams, massive bombings have been carried out.

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