Attack on Baghdad mosque deepens anger at U.S.

An attack on a Shiite mosque compound in Baghdad March 26 that left up to 37 people dead has sharpened a conflict between the U.S. occupation forces and groups that up to now have been the most reliable U.S. allies in the Iraqi government.

Lt. Col. Sean Swindell, commander of the U.S. unit that took part in the raid, claimed Iraqi soldiers were leading it and targeted an insurgent group’s compound in northern Baghdad. (Washington Post, March 27)

In reaction to the raid, Baghdad governor Hussein al-Tahan said he would “cease all political and logistical cooperation with American forces” and that the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi Defense Ministry should conduct an investigation, “but not the American military.” Interior Minister Bayan Jabr Sulagh called the event an “unjustified aggression against the faithful as they prayed in a mosque.” (Christian Science Monitor, March 27)

These differing versions come from forces that just recently were allied with the U.S. in the goal of setting up a government in Baghdad and crushing the Iraqi resistance. They indicate no solutions have been found to the problems facing the illegal U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Continuing armed clashes are possible between U.S. troops and the Shiite-based Mahdi Army, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, who is now under attack in the U.S. corporate media.

On top of this, every day reports come in from the various regions of Iraq of dozens of bodies killed execution-style. Despite these reports, the U.S. authorities, from Gen. Peter Pace to President George W. Bush, continue to say that “civil war has been averted,” and, in Bush’s case, “We will complete this mission”—a big step down from his triumphant aircraft carrier speech on May 1, 2003, before a sign reading “Mission accomplished.”

U.S. foments Iraqi differences

Under rules set up by the U.S./British occupation, elected and appointed posts in the national government are divided among three main regions determined by ethnic and/or religious differences: Kurds from the Northeast, Sunni Muslims from the Northwest and Center, and Shiites from the South. Baghdad, the capital, has people from all three of these groups, including a Shiite community of millions.

These occupation rules encourage organi zation along religious and ethnic lines and have helped lay the groundwork for the “civil war” everyone is discussing now.

The struggle, however, is not just over religion but division of the oil reserves located in the south and north.

According to reports from resistance groups, armed resistance to the occupation began in the mainly Sunni regions, among small units of both secular and religious organizations. Many of the fighters and unit leaders came from the disbanded Iraqi army. Until the December 2005 election, few organizations in these regions cooperated with the occupation. (Interview with Abdeljabbar al-Kubaysi in the Portuguese newspaper Avante, March 16.)

The leading coalition in the new elected government groups together three Shiite-based forces: the SCIRI, led by the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Dawa Party and the Mahdi Army. In the spring of 2004, Muqtada al-Sadr’s forces were in open battle with the U.S. occupation, but last year they joined this coalition.

Washington’s contradictions

These three Shiite forces have friendly relations with the Iranian government, which complicates their cooperation with the U.S. Lately Washington has stepped up its propaganda war against Iran and has even threatened military intervention there.

Some Shiite leaders also accused the Pentagon of conducting the March 26 raid on the mosque so it could “distance itself” from the Shiites, because the U.S. “feared that Iraq would be controlled exclusively by Shiites, rather than shared with the Sun nis,” reported Knight-Ridder on March 27.

The SCIRI and Dawa are conservative religious forces that have cooperated with the occupation since 2003; they and their militias are hostile to the Ba’ath party and other secular and Sunni-based organizations, and are suspected of carrying out assassinations of fellow Iraqis.

Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army gets its support from the poorer portion of Iraq’s urban Shiite population and is strong in Baghdad. While it, too, is hostile to Ba’athists, it is also the quickest of the Shiite-based forces to focus blame on the U.S. occupation for Iraq’s disaster.

The March 28 New York Times quotes a young Mahdi Army member, Katheer Abdulla Ridha, as saying: “We are ready to resist the Americans and strike their bases. The Sunnis have nothing to do with this, and we shouldn’t accuse them of everything that’s going on.”

Put on trial at the behest of the occupation, former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein recently shouted out in the courtroom an appeal to all Iraqis to put aside their sectarian and ethnic differences and join to drive out the occupation. The court quickly silenced him. The Bush administration’s worst nightmare is that all Iraqis, whether or not they follow Saddam Hussein, will unite to fight the occupation.