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Iraq

Iraq's holy city of Najaf witnessing a boom - Not a bomb for a change

2008-08-28

NAJAF, Iraq -- The city's first airport is weeks away from opening, but already a bigger one is talked about. Land prices are soaring. Merchants say they don't remember business ever being so good. Four years ago, Najaf was an urban battlefield with American troops fighting Shiite militiamen loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Today, the Shiite holy city is a hot spot of a different kind thanks to improved security, a free-for-all market economy _ and a direct pipeline to the Shiite-led government. The boomtown buzz in Najaf is more remarkable for its limited company. It's matched only in the northern cities of Sulaimaniyah and Irbil in the self-ruled Kurdish region in northern Iraq, which has been mostly a bystander in the war. Now, Najaf may point to some of the same ambitions for wider autonomy by the most powerful Shiite party _ with possible far-reaching implications for the country. The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council hopes to maintain its domination of Najaf's local government in provincial elections expected late this year or early 2009. Its broader goal is a self-governing region in Iraq's Shiite south _ with its oil wealth and important religious shrines. Shiite rivals oppose such a move, fearing it would cement the Supreme Council's sway over Shiite affairs. Sunni groups, meanwhile, argue that a Shiite autonomous region would fall under Iranian influence and lead to the eventual breakup of Iraq. "We already are making every effort to win Najaf" in the provincial elections, said Ridha Jawad Taqi, a Supreme Council lawmaker. "We may well make it the capital of a future region." It's already getting a major facelift _ even as plans to build new commercial towers and hotels in Baghdad remain little more than blueprints. Other ideas, including a giant Ferris wheel bigger than the famous London Eye, are even farther out the fringes. But in Najaf, the rumblings are real. Construction crews race to keep pace with millions of Shiite pilgrims _ some from as far away as India and Britain _ who visit the shrine of the revered Imam Ali or bury their dead in the massive "Valley of Peace" cemetery. The city's ancient bazaar stays open until around 11 p.m., quite late for a market in most parts of Iraq these days due to security concerns. Shoppers fill narrow alleys to buy gold and silver jewelry, spices, worry beads and perfumes sold in small ornate bottles. Ahmed Redha, head of the state Investment Authority in Baghdad, estimated that US$38.8 billion in projects are on the drawing board for Najaf and many will be undertaken by private companies. The core of the plans call for new luxury hotels and more than 200,000 housing units, he said.

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Iraq

Jaafari’s rejection as PM final, says Kurds

2006-04-10

Iraqi Kurdish leaders have officially informed the main Shia Alliance that their rejection of Ibrahim al-Jaafari as the Alliance nomination for prime minister is final, political sources said on Sunday. The message was delivered by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who is also a top Kurdish leader, to a committee from the Alliance, the sources said. The Alliance, under growing pressure to nominate a replacement to break a deadlock over a unity government, is expected to inform other political blocs of their final decision on Jaafari today (Monday), the sources said. Representatives from the seven factions of the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shia bloc, formed a three member committee to discuss the deadlock over Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari with the Sunni and Kurdish parties “to be more certain” of the reasons for their opposition, said Shia official Ridha Jawad Taqi earlier on Sunday. A Shia official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue said al-Jaafari’s supporters within his Dawa party and the movement of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr were still insisting on keeping the prime minister as the Shia nominee to head the next government. Sunni politician Saleh al-Mutlaq proposed that the new prime minister be chosen by consensus among all parties, a proposal the Shias are unlikely to accept. The constitution states that the largest bloc in parliament - the Shia alliance - has the right to nominate the prime minister subject to parliamentary approval. Al-Mutlaq said the new government should be made up of “independents, nationalists and technocrats from outside the current political parties.” Al-Jaafari has refused to step down. Alliance leaders have been reluctant to force a move against him as long as Dawa and the al-Sadr group stick by their support. Such a move could lead to the breakup of the Shia alliance. So the Shiite majority, in order to remain a majority, has to remain in thrall to the Shiite minority, led by Tater. That makes him the power broken and coincidentally protects him from getting a thorough thumping from the Americans or the Iraqis. I'm not sure what this says about the political skills of the players in Baghdad, but it's probably not very complimentary.

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Iraq

30 killed but pleas, curfew curb Iraq violence

2006-02-27

Mortar fire killed 15 people and shooting erupted around two Baghdad mosques on Sunday but pleas for unity and a third day of curfew in the city seemed to dampen sectarian violence that has pitched Iraq towards civil war. Five killed in a minibus, teenagers gunned down playing football and two US soldiers were among 30 deaths, a lower toll than other days since a suspected Al Qaeda bomb at a Shiite shrine sparked reprisals on minority Sunnis and the biggest test of Iraq's survival as a unified state since the US invasion. Well over 200 people have been killed since Wednesday and the defence minister has warned of an "endless civil war." After taking calls from President George W. Bush, who hopes stability can let him start bringing 136,000 US troops home, Iraqi leaders met late on Saturday to issue a televised midnight appeal for calm and renew pledges to form a unity government. Religious leaders, including the fiery young cleric and Shiite militia leader Moqtada Sadr, joined the calls. Sadr, a rising force in the ruling but fractious Shiite alliance, told a rally in the second city of Basra his followers would hold joint prayer services at Sunni mosques damaged in violence. A bomb later caused damage at a Shiite mosque in Basra and gunfire rattled around two Sunni mosques in Baghdad after dark. "We have passed the danger period. The security situation is now 80 per cent stable," said Ridha Jawad Taqi, a senior official in SCIRI, the biggest of the Shiite Islamist parties, which also runs a 20,000-strong armed wing, the Badr movement. "The situation pushed the different groups to get together." The curfew should end as planned at 6:00am, officials said. "The violence seems to be diminishing," Bush's National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told CBS television. "They've stared into the abyss a bit. I think they've all concluded that further violence ... is not in their interests."

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Iraq

Now a politician, Sadr retains militia, anti-US outlook

2006-02-19

Barely 18 months ago Muqtada al-Sadr was a man on the run, wanted for murder and holed up with a band of fighters in a mosque besieged by U.S. troops. Fast forward to February 2006 and the young Shiite cleric is a kingmaker with so much clout that he engineered a stunning political coup, helping Ibrahim al-Jaafari win approval for a second term as prime minister with significant consequences for Iraq and the United States. Al-Sadr pulled it off while visiting Syria for talks with its hardline leadership, long accused of allowing insurgent leaders to remain on its soil and turning a blind eye to foreign jihadists using its territory to slip into Iraq to fight U.S. forces. The single-vote victory by al-Jaafari over his heavily favored rival has showcased al-Sadr's ascent in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq – a matter of concern to others in the Shiite establishment as well as the United States. Officials of the Shiite alliance say the Sadrists' intervention in favor of al-Jaafari may have endangered Shiite unity, jeopardized the alliance's close links to the Kurds and could prompt some of the alliance's partners to join other blocs. They hinted that intimidation, or even veiled threats of violence, may have been used by the Sadrists to help independent lawmakers make up their minds. “The Sadrists moved in forcefully in the 24 hours that preceded the vote,” said Ridha Jawad Taqi of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, the country's largest Shiite party. SCIRI's candidate, Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, lost to al-Jaafari. Al-Sadr supporters, who are expected to be given five Cabinet posts in al-Jaafari's next government, deny any impropriety. They say they backed al-Jaafari because they share with him a vision for an Iraq free of foreign occupation. They, however, were at pains to conceal their satisfaction that al-Jaafari's win dealt a blow to the Supreme Council, their rival within the United Iraqi Alliance, a grouping of religious parties that has won the largest number of seats – 130 – in the 275-member parliament. “We have no problem with the Supreme Council. It was a purely democratic contest decided by the ballot box,” said Falah Hassan Shalshal, one of 30 lawmakers loyal to al-Sadr. A close Sadrist alliance with Iraq's next prime minister would not be good news for Washington. “The United States is targeting Islam, the Muslim and Arab states in the Middle East and beyond,” al-Sadr told Syrian television in a Feb. 13 interview. “It wants to control the world.” Al-Sadr, between meetings with Jordan's leaders, stepped up calls Saturday for the United States and other foreign troops to leave Iraq. “The aim of my visit to the region is to improve relations with neighboring countries, which is a very important issue, and to free this area from the Western, American war, whether it be in Iraq, Iran, Syria or the rest of the region,” al-Sadr said. Before coming to Jordan, al-Sadr visited Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and Syria. His aides say he plans visits to Lebanon and Egypt. While in Syria, the 33-year-old al-Sadr met with radical Palestinian factions, expressed hope that the sweeping victory by the militant Hamas group is the beginning of an “Islamic awakening.” He rejected calling Iraq's mostly Sunni insurgents terrorists and said al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was “a fictitious personality or one created by the (U.S.) occupation.” Al-Sadr and his followers burst on the Iraqi scene almost three years ago, filling the power vacuum left by the collapse of Saddam's regime. The movement quickly raised its profile, organizing anti-U.S. protests and later taking on the Americans in battles across central and southern Iraq. The protracted battle of Najaf, a holy Shiite city south of Baghdad, in the summer of 2004 saw his militiamen soundly defeated by a joint U.S.-Iraqi force. Taking the fight to his stronghold in Baghdad's mainly Shiite Sadr City district brought him another defeat. By the end of 2004, al-Sadr's days as an anti-U.S. warrior cleric were over, but he and his followers are still some distance from being a peaceful and democratic force. The Sadrists have kept a highly mobile militia numbering in the thousands. They follow a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law and, according to residents in areas where they are dominant, often resort to violence to enforce it. They are suspected of running death squads, primarily targeting Saddam loyalists and militant Sunni Arabs known for anti-Shiite sentiments. They are closely linked to Iran, maintain contacts with some factions of the Sunni-dominated insurgency and, like other Shiite groups, have allowed hundreds of militiamen to infiltrate the security forces. In the southern city of Basra, for example, residents say al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militiamen bomb stores suspected of selling liquor or permissive entertainment material. They intercept, and in some cases beat up, men and women whose appearance they deem immodest. Last year, Mahdi militiamen burned three offices belonging to the Supreme Council after al-Sadr's Najaf office was torn down to allow for the expansion of a plaza outside the mosque of Imam Ali, Shiism's founding father. In the southern city of Kut, residents say the Mahdi militiamen have stopped parading on the streets as they used to in 2004, but were suspected of bombing liquor stores and barber shops. Muzafar al-Moussawi, al-Sadr's representative in Kut, denies the Mahdi Army was involved in the bombings, but acknowledges that its fighters “assist security forces when asked.”

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