Baghdad Sunni protest deepens sectarian tension

Waleed Ibrahim
Reuters
20 May 2005

Baghdad's main Sunni Muslim mosques closed for three days on Friday to protest against what clerics said were killings of preachers by a Shi'ite militia, stoking fears sectarian strife could slide toward civil war. The closure, called by the influential Muslim Clerics Association, came amid a surge of violence that has killed more than 500 people since a new Shi'ite-led government promising improved security was announced last month.

"In protest over attacks on mosques and killings of clerics, the detentions of worshippers and theft of their property, the Sunni leadership is closing mosques," preacher Muayad al-A'adhami said at Friday prayers at the Abu Hanifa mosque. Last week, Harith al-Dhari, head of the Muslim Clerics Association, accused the Shi'ite Badr Brigades militia of carrying out attacks on Sunnis.

The leader of the Badr Brigades, the military wing of one of Iraq's leading Shi'ite parties, denied the charges. Minority Sunni Arabs, once dominant under Saddam Hussein, have been increasingly isolated since Jan. 30 elections. Iraq's Shi'ites and Kurds, who triumphed in the polls, say they will give Sunnis a key role in government -- even though they only won 17 of the 275 seats in parliament -- in a bid to defuse the Sunni-led insurgency.

Sunni clerics said the mosque protests were limited to Baghdad but frustrations have spread to towns such as Ramadi in the west, where witnesses said thousands protested on Friday over allegations of U.S. desecration of the Koran. The U.S. military says the allegations are false. "Political solutions are over and military solutions will start. We will die rather than accept the desecration of our holy book and the detention of our women," said Samir al-Dulaimi, head of the Muslim Clerics Association in Anbar province, during the protest.

Mainly Sunni insurgents have stepped up suicide bombings since the government was announced.

A little-known Sunni group claimed responsibility on Friday for a car bombing a day earlier that killed at least two people and wounded five near a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in Baghdad. The authenticity of the statement, from the Jamaat Jund al-Sahaba (Soldiers of the Prophet's Companions), could not immediately be verified. A group using that name claimed responsibility for an attack that killed at least 31 people in a Shi'ite town earlier this month and for a March suicide bombing that killed 50 people at a Shi'ite mosque in northern Iraq.

SECTARIAN ANGER

Iraqi officials accuse the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, of ordering suicide bombings in a bid to ignite a full-scale sectarian conflict. Recent discoveries of dozens of bodies of Iraqis who had been shot execution-style have fueled the tension. Most victims were Shi'ites but some were Sunni Arabs. Shi'ites have largely heeded calls by their clerics to show restraint but escalating violence has strained their patience.

Although Sunnis lack a united leadership, the Muslim Clerics Association has considerable influence so accusations against the Badr Brigades are likely to focus Sunni anger. "The Badr Brigades are responsible for all that is happening to Sunnis and Shi'ites in Iraq," Dulaimi said.

Moqtada al-Sadr, the fiery Shi'ite cleric who led two uprisings against U.S. troops in Iraq, told his supporters to avoid getting drawn into a sectarian conflict. "You shall not let yourselves be the starting point of a sectarian strife," Sadr said ahead of Friday prayers near the sacred Shi'ite city of Najaf. His followers burned a U.S. flag to protest against the presence of American troops in Iraq.

In Baghdad, insurgents kept up a campaign to topple the U.S.-backed government with attacks on Iraqi forces. Two policemen were killed in a roadside bomb attack on a patrol. West of the capital, guerrillas fired rockets at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison, wounding five detainees, the U.S. military said. No U.S. troops were injured.

Iraq has repeatedly accused Syria of allowing insurgents to cross its borders to carry out attacks. Damascus denies this. On a visit to Ankara, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said on Friday Iraq would send a delegation to Damascus soon to seek Syria's help in stopping infiltration.

In a move likely to enrage Saddam loyalists, pictures of the toppled dictator in his underpants were splashed across the front page of Britain's biggest-selling daily newspaper on Friday. The same photos later appeared in the New York Post. The Sun also published a picture of Saddam in its Saturday edition, showing the former Iraqi leader in a white robe apparently praying behind razor wire in his prison. The paper has said it got the pictures from U.S. military sources who handed them over "in the hope of dealing a body blow to the resistance in Iraq."

Washington promised an investigation.

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Citation: Waleed Ibrahim, "Baghdad Sunni protest deepens sectarian tension," Reuters, 20 May 2005. Original URL: http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050520/wl_nm/iraq_dc_54&printer=1