I posted the other day the importance of taunting in the execution of Saddam Hussein, and specifically the reference to “Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada.” The Iraqi civil war is infused with symbolism and Moqtada al-Sadr’s movement regularly exploits religious and political symbolism to secure moral and military authority in the country. The one event that sent Iraq over the cliff into full civil war was the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra in February 2006. Though nobody died in the bombing, the shrine is especially significant to Twelver Shi’ites because it is the supposed site where the Mahdi disappeared in the 9th century. Sadr’s movement is driven by millenarian belief in the return of the Mahdi; thus the shrine was symbolically potent.
I believe there are two other reasons why the shrine bombing set off a full sectarian war. First, the nation had already passed through its final and permanent set of elections, thus guaranteeing Shi’ite power over the government. No longer did Shi’ites need to abide by Ali Sistani’s calls for moderation. Sistani cautioned against sectarian reprisals for Sunni terrorism because it might jeopardize the transition to Shi’ite rule. That problem out of the way after the December 2005 elections, Shi’ites felt free to respond with violence.
The other reason the Shi’ites retaliated was that the Askariya shrine was the only major shrine guarded by the Iraqi army and not by either the Sadrist militia or SCIRI’s Badr Corps militia. As a result, Shi’ites lost faith in the government’s ability to protect their sacred symbols and turned completely to the militias for defense of lives and honor.
Either way, the Askiriya shrine was and is a critical symbolic space in the Iraqi civil war. It is therefore terrible news that in the wake of the sectarianization of Saddam Hussein’s execution, Sunnis responded in protest by desecrating the Askariya shrine again! Sunnis apparently “broke the locks off the badly damaged Shiite Golden Dome mosque and marched through carrying a mock coffin and photo of the executed former leader.”
As Juan Cole points out, this is VERY bad news. Sunnis paraded through the Askariyah shrine with the portrait of a man who terrorized Shi’ites for years…all because some thug in the execution chamber chanted “Moqtada” at Saddam’s death.
The Iraq civil war is rife with symbolism and this event may end up as symbolically resonant as the February 2006 bombing. Again, Saddam Hussein’s execution has now become a critical moment of division, revenge and sectarianism. In this bizarre war, deaths of hundreds yield pedestrian response; murder for murder. But symbolic attacks – assaults upon the honor of a people – result in far more catastrophic responses.