Among Shiites, Anti-U.S. Activists Gain Momentum

Only six months ago, many among Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority regarded Americans as saviors who had freed them from a long nightmare of religious persecution and political repression under Saddam Hussein.

Today, in the streets of a sprawling Shiite slum on Baghdad’s outskirts known as Sadr City, quiet expressions of gratitude toward the U.S. can still be heard. But in an ominous sign for the U.S.-led provisional administration in Iraq, such sentiments are increasingly being drowned out by voices raised in anger over the American presence.

Even before a deadly car bomb ripped through a police compound Thursday in Sadr City, the Shiite community was roiling with discontent. Earlier this week, huge, unruly demonstrations broke out in the heart of Baghdad over the U.S. detention of a Shiite cleric accused of inciting and aiding violent resistance to the American-led occupation.

The arrest came at a sensitive time, just days before the start of an annual Shiite pilgrimage whose holiness is considered second only to the Muslim prayer and fasting month of Ramadan. And it only compounded the hard feelings stemming from an incident in Sadr City in August, when a U.S. helicopter crew intentionally knocked down a religious banner from a tower. That action triggered a deadly clash with American troops.

But the reasons for Shiites’ disaffection with Americans run far deeper, according to analysts who track the swirling currents in Iraq’s complex world of religious politics as well as to ordinary adherents of this austere stream of Islam.

In Sadr City, many Shiites speak in aggrieved tones of feeling misunderstood by the American authorities -- painted in broad brushstrokes, they believe, as fanatics who seek to create a theocracy to rule Iraq.

Shiites make up about 60% of Iraq’s 24 million people, but many now anticipate that as a postwar power structure takes form, they may be denied political clout commensurate with their numbers. Instead, they fear, minority Sunnis will continue to call the shots, as they did throughout the Hussein era.

“The United States is worse than Saddam,” said 23-year-old storekeeper Isam Lafta, marching Thursday on the first leg of a pilgrimage to the sacred city of Karbala, 55 miles to the southwest -- one of several holy journeys in the course of the year that Shiite faithful believe they are called upon by God to make.

Such displays of religious devotion were banned under Hussein, but joy in that newfound freedom didn’t prevent resentment from boiling to the surface as the pilgrims, turbaned or veiled, wrapped in billowing black robes, began their hot, dusty, three-day walk.

“The Americans, they come and say they want peace, justice and freedom while they are doing the exact opposite, because what we do doesn’t serve their interest,” Lafta said. “Saddam was more straightforward.”

Physically, Sadr City looks much as it did before the war: a teeming, desperately poor enclave of nearly 2 million people, whose air is choked with smoke and whose rutted, garbage-strewn streets run with raw sewage in the wet season. Unemployment remains rampant, and religious fervor offers a ready escape from a squalid, dead-end reality.

“There was nothing for us before, and there’s nothing for us now,” said Riad Jaber, 26, who like almost everyone in his circle is jobless.

In such a climate of hopelessness, whatever power structure exists is regarded with deep suspicion, and any incident of violence -- including Thursday’s bombing -- gives rise to a rash of conspiracy theories.

Coalition authorities suspect that the blast was staged in reprisal for the Iraqi police force’s cooperation with the occupiers. But Jaber and others saw another culprit.

“The Americans did this, you know,” Jaber said in an urgent whisper, glancing around at the angry crowd that gathered outside the police station in the wake of the blast. “Their helicopter was right overhead, and then the explosion came. It is all perfectly clear to everyone.”

Scholars see a widening schism in the Shiite community, pitting pragmatists who seek only to rebuild their lives against hard-core ideological opponents of the U.S.-led occupation.

“I think that among the Shia, you have a silent majority, people who are neutral, who are simply waiting to see what will happen,” said Mustafa Alani, an associate fellow at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies. “But you have a very vocal sector who believe their legitimacy within the society as a whole is better served by condemning the occupation.”

“I don’t think the pro-U.S. elements are very strong now,” he added. “They are afraid of losing ground, losing credibility.”

Those who are seen as accommodating American interests are being made to pay the price.

Jaseem Mohasin, a Shiite policeman who was in the police compound at the time of Thursday’s blast, suffered cuts from broken glass and shrapnel.

He found it hard to comprehend why anyone would attack a station full of officers who were born and raised in the neighborhood.

“What have we done to cause harm?” he asked, speaking in unnaturally loud, studied tones because the explosion had left him temporarily half-deaf. “We are making a living to feed our families and working to protect the people of this area, our neighbors. How, how can anyone find fault with that?”

Sadr City shopkeeper Mohammed Jaseem agreed.

“Acts of sabotage are being carried out by those who do not want to see peace and stability here in Iraq,” he said. “And most people here do want to see peace and stability. We have more to gain from it than anyone.”

Even so, he was swift to add that the Americans should not overstay their welcome.

“We want them to leave, and sooner rather than later,” he said.

Coalition officials regard with dread the prospect of hardening Shiite opposition to the American military presence. That is due in no small measure to the fear of suicide attackers arising from a religious milieu in which martyrdom is held up to greater glory than it is among Iraq’s more secular Sunni Muslims.

In the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad -- where much of the violence directed at U.S. forces in Iraq has been concentrated -- insurgents have been employing methods to harass troops that pose relatively little risk to themselves, such as planting bombs.

“A suicide attacker, someone with the conviction to carry out an attack, is the ultimate ‘smart bomb,’ and able to pose a much more serious threat,” said a U.S. military official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “That is exactly what we do not want to see here.”

Even among those who foreswear violence, there is a redoubled determination among many Shiites to let their faith be their guide to life -- and politics.

On the pilgrimage trail south of Baghdad, marchers stopped to rest in the searing midday heat, 29-year-old Falah Hussein among them.

He said he had learned an important lesson from a lifetime under Hussein’s yoke.

“Before, if we had followed God’s instructions and trusted in him more,” he said, “Saddam would never have prevailed.”

--- UNPUBLISHED NOTE ---

In stories after April 9, 2004, Shiite cleric Muqtader Sadr is correctly referred to as Muqtada Sadr.

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