Free From Oppression, Not Instability

Caked with sweat and blood, beating their breasts and whipping their backs, 1 million pilgrims poured through hot, bright streets Tuesday, dazed from walking and frenzied with grief and self-flagellation.

“Where is the reckless Saddam now?” taunted the crowds, pushing toward the mosque. “The oppressors of the pilgrims to Karbala?” They limped along on blistered feet, drew swords to slash their scalps and beat themselves with chains.

It was the first time in decades that Iraq’s Shiite majority was allowed to perform its spring pilgrimage to the tomb of Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad. Under the regime of Saddam Hussein, the rite -- held each year on the anniversary of the grandson’s death -- was punished by torture, arrest and execution.

“This is the victory of right over wrong,” pilgrim Irfan Asadi said Tuesday, beaming broadly at the sea of believers.

But beneath the trappings of incense, bullhorns and fluttering flags, the rowdy catharsis of liberation was tempered by profound uncertainty. Asked about their country’s future, Shiites uttered the same two words over and over: Unstable, and unclear.

“Nothing is clear,” said Kadisia Hussain Abdul Wahid, 34. “It’s a great pleasure and liberty to be here, but we don’t know what comes next.” The old government is gone, but there is no new system to replace it. Shiites are divided over whether to welcome or shun U.S. troops; over which religious leaders to follow; over whether it’s better to have a democratic government, an Islamic republic or both.

“It is important to have an Islamic government,” said Watha Ali, a 23-year-old pilgrim who limped toward the cool turquoise arches of Hussein’s tomb. “Democracy? I think the Islamic government will be democratic.”

On streets choked with writhing bodies, pilgrims prayed -- and called for an end to U.S. occupation. They sang of the heroic death of Hussein -- and of the collapse of Saddam Hussein. They clutched pictures of long-dead martyrs -- and of modern-day holy men who are locked in a violent struggle for control of Shiite doctrine. It was by turns a civic exhibition, a massive campaign rally and a call to arms.

All of this is an unfamiliar, even awkward, exercise for Iraq. The nation’s 16 million Shiites have long been crushed into compliance by the formerly ruling Baath Party, which was made up of rival Sunni Muslims.

“Freedom has been inside us all along,” said Hamed Hussein, a baker from the southern town of Adasia. “But until now we haven’t practiced it.”

Pilgrims spoke in one breath of gratitude for the ouster of Saddam Hussein, and in the next, of their rage at the presence of foreign troops.

“We really thank America very much, but they must leave our country now,” said 37-year-old Abu Ali Basri, who journeyed from the southern city of Basra. “Otherwise, we’ll fight. Just look at these rallies: The people are ready to fight the invaders.”

Stone-faced worshipers clutched English-language signs and held them out for the gaze of foreign journalists. “We want justice, freedom, independence,” read one sign. “Honorable Islamic scholars are our real representatives,” said another.

In the shadow of the gold domes of Hussein’s tomb, the pilgrims’ eyes were dazed, their faces slack from walking and the sun. No U.S. troops or security forces were visible in the shrines or the marketplace fanning out from the holy grounds. By all appearances, only the edicts of the mosque scholars held sway.

In the absence of Saddam Hussein’s secular government, Shiites have begun to take charge of scattered municipal and judicial functions. They are determined, and likely, to claim a large chunk of power in Iraq’s new government.

But that authority is fractured. As Baghdad fell, some of the Shiite leadership plunged into disarray. The shrine at Najaf, the sacred city that is a spiritual center for Iraq’s Shiites, has been shuttered while holy men feud for eminence.

Two religious leaders were slain this month outside the Najaf mosque. A third has withdrawn into seclusion. A decree posted at the shrine there calls for an Islamic republic in Iraq and the murder of all Baathists.

“There’s a vacuum in power,” said Saad Naji Jawadi, a political analyst at Baghdad University. “Everybody is trying to take the law into their own hands.”

And in the streets of Karbala, traumatized Shiites were still struggling to shake the shadows of the past. They hesitated before answering questions, and sometimes cringed when asked their names. Some admitted they were still afraid of the old regime, and there were whispers that agents of the former government lurked in their midst.

Asked about Saddam Hussein, a woman shook her head vigorously and made the elaborate pantomime of clapping a hand over her mouth.

As volunteers sprayed rose water into the air to cool the pilgrims’ cheeks, a 60-year-old woman named Amina Kadhum crouched on the ground with a photograph of her slain daughter. Amina Abbas was put to death in 1982, when she was 22.

Her mother says the family was never told why; without explanation, the government ordered her to pick up her daughter’s corpse. “I received the body,” Kadhum said, “and I buried it myself.”

Her other daughter, Sundus Abbas, said she was arrested after security forces caught her with a Shiite pamphlet. She spent eight years in prison. “Wherever we went, the police were listening,” said Sundus Abbas, now 40. “We were even finding spies behind the radish bin. We were stifled.”

Nearby, tears streamed down Nasbeh Essa’s tattooed cheeks. “We are here to complain to God about our previous circumstances,” she said. Below her black veils, her mouth and eyes were puckered with wrinkles. Security forces came for her son five years ago, she said, and she never saw him again.

“I am going to supplicate my God to get rid of Saddam Hussein,” she said, “even though he is already gone.”