The civil war in Iraq unofficially enters its second year today — the anniversary of the insurgent bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.
The mosque, the holiest of the holy for Shiites, remains closed, a heap of untouched rubble symbolic of the firestorm of sectarian violence unleashed by a botched U.S. occupation.
The attack was a brilliant tactical move because the insurgents, who probably were affiliated with Al Qaeda, knew that it would put the U.S. in the middle of a war within a war. The result has been the emergence of sectarian militias and their ethnic cleansing squads, and the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans, with no end to the bloodshed in sight.
Samarra has become a virtual ghost town without the millions of pilgrims who would journey to the mosque. Reconstruction has been delayed because of disagreements between the Sunnis who control the city and the Shiites who run the mosque about how to proceed.
The edifice is officially known as the Askariya mosque and contains the tombs of the 10th and 11th imams — Ali Al-Hadi, who died in 868, and his son Hassan Al-Askari, who died in 874. Both are descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, and Shiites consider them to be among his successors.
The shrine also is near the place where the 12th imam, Mohammed Al-Mahdi, disappeared.
Al-Mahdi, known as the Hidden Imam, was the son and grandson of the two imams buried in the Askariya shrine. Shiites believe he will return to Earth to vanquish opression and restore justice to humanity.
Well, Al-Mahdi, your time has come.
Neil Shea, a National Geographic staff writer who has reported from Samarra and elsewhere in Iraq, has a terrific commentary on the anniversary of the Golden Mosque bombing over at World Politics Watch.
An excerpt:
There is no doubt civil war exists in Iraq. Since the destruction of the Golden Mosque, violence and brutality have increased. In Baghdad and other cities, Sunnis and Shiites have been driven from their homes by fighting, threatened away by militias, or killed without warning and left in heaps of shattered flesh. Car bombs shred the markets. The morgues yawn with bodies. Ever-widening waves of destruction pulse through the country.
By refusing in the last year to admit civil war had begun, by defining the violence according to the smallest of details, the administration narrowed its vision and strategy sufficiently for the fighting to continue unchecked. The Sunni-Shiite war was perhaps an unpredictable consequence of the U.S.-led invasion. But, left to fester, it became an untreated cancer.
Now, looking back, we can see things more clearly. The mosque bombing may not have been preventable. Some of the following terror certainly was. Instead, military commanders didn’t really react. Troops remained behind their blast walls, waiting to see what would happen. Then they emerged blinking into a war-scape that had suddenly changed. Americans hoped Iraqi soldiers and police would be able to handle the situation. They could not. They hoped curfews would calm the streets until, after a while, the anger faded like a sand storm. It never did.
More here.