Aftermath: following the bloodshed of America's wars in the muslim world Part 3

It was immediately apparent that the raid had targeted the husseiniya, which strictly speaking was not a mosque but had the same function as one and even had a minaret with loud speakers on its top to broadcast the calls to prayer. Moreover, the husseiniya was not located in the Adhamiya neighborhood, contrary to the coalition press statement. Adhamiya is a Sunni bastion not far from Shaab, but the two neighborhoods are worlds apart. Could the Americans have confused the most heavily Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad with a s.h.i.+te stronghold? Could they have confused Muqtada's s.h.i.+te militia with a terrorist cell? Before the war the Mustafa Husseiniya had been a Baath Party office. Like other political movements, Muqtada's had seized many Baath Party buildings following the war. Some former Baath Party buildings even had domes now.

A large sign in front of the Mustafa Husseiniya bore the faces of Muqtada's father and local Mahdi Army martyrs. Black banners hung on the wall with Arabic letters in white, red, green, and yellow. "We express condolences to the Mahdi and the whole Islamic nation for the disaster of the martyrdom of the brother believers and the attacks on them in the Mustafa Husseiniya at the hands of the takfiris backed by the occupation forces." Other banners echoed this: "The ma.s.sacre of the Mustafa Husseiniya was done by the Wahhabis with the help of the Americans." Another said that the ma.s.sacre had been committed by "the forces of darkness with the help of the forces of occupation."

The large lot before the husseiniya was blocked off by concrete traffic barriers. A large black chadir (a round tent used for mourning) was erected in it. Big red-and-green flags waved from above it. Rows of plastic chairs were lined up, and several turbaned clerics sat talking. It was customary to enter on the right side and shake the hands of all present, wis.h.i.+ng peace upon them one by one until the end. Then the visitor would sit down and ask G.o.d to have mercy on the one who would read the Fatiha, the first verse of the Koran. Then everyone would recite the Fatiha seated except for the relatives of the deceased, who would say it standing. Following the recital, the men would all wipe their hands down their faces.

A banner on one of the concrete barriers announced, "The followers of the family of the Prophet Muhammad understand this: the money of the Saudis and the hatred of the Americans and the ugliness and the barbarism of the Wahhabis and the cowardice of the political s.h.i.+te leaders equals the slaughter of the s.h.i.+tes of Ali, the commander of the faithful." Beside the banner was a picture of Ayatollah Sistani and Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. In front of the husseiniya was a small stand on which a pot of tea was boiling. I was offered a small gla.s.s of the very sweet and strong tea popular in Iraq, always poured into gla.s.ses that taper inward gracefully. Gla.s.ses were then rinsed in a bowl of water and reused. I was carrying a film camera with me but was warned not to film the many armed men who stood outside, slinging Kalashnikovs casually. The young men guarding the mosque welcomed me and gave me a tour of the wreckage. Firas was there too, and he introduced himself to me to maintain the charade.

They pointed to an exploded wall and a pile of rubble that had been the imam's home (imams often live on the premises or in a house attached to the mosque). The men explained that an American Apache helicopter had fired a missile at it and destroyed it. They had collected all the shrapnel to prove it, along with numerous sh.e.l.l casings from American M-16s. Three blackened cars sat inside the courtyard. I was told they belonged to people praying in the mosque and had been parked outside but that the Americans had burned them and then dragged them inside the husseiniya. Against one wall was a large picture of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr and Sheikh Haitham al-Ansari, Shaab's murdered cleric. I asked one of my guides, the caretaker Abul Ha.s.san, who wore a black dishdasha with white trousers beneath it, why the Americans had come. "By G.o.d I don't know," he said. "We were surprised by their raid." He attributed it to political pressure on the Sadr movement.

Brownish red blood smeared the courtyard, where bodies had been dragged. "They killed people praying, innocent people," the caretaker said. "One of the people praying was shot here," he pointed, "and dragged all the way here." He pointed to a room, "and one was shot here." He showed me dried pools of blood and pointed to the ceiling, where blood and pieces of flesh had splattered from somebody's head. "They brought four here-one of them was fourteen." He gestured to another room: "There were five martyrs in that room." The men were just as concerned with the posters, which had been cut or torn. Adjacent to the husseiniya were several rooms that had been given to the Dawa Party-Iraq organization. This was not Prime Minister Jaafari's party but a rival branch (there are three), which had been exiled in Iran. Inside the offices, blood covered plastic chairs and the floor. Political posters covered the walls featuring the first and second Sadr martyrs. "Here they killed one," my guides told me, pointing to more blood. They showed me the jinsiya (ID cards) of the three martyrs from the Dawa office. In one of the Dawa rooms they pointed out a vast pool of blood with white pieces of brain stuck in it. The men pointed to more blood. "Torture, you understand? Torture," one man told me. A book written by Muhamad Sadiq al-Sadr was covered in blood. A poster of Jaafari had black ink scribbled on his face. In the room where ceremonial drums and chains were stored, drums had been torn, pictures torn off.

Sheikh Safaa stood in the courtyard by his destroyed home, pacing back and forth while talking on his mobile phone. When he got off, Firas and several other young men surrounded him to consult as I waited. I recognized another one of them, a young man also wearing a black suit and black s.h.i.+rt with no tie, and black leather shoes. He worked for the state de-Baathification committee but was close to the Sadrists and pa.s.sed information about Baathists along to the Mahdi Army.

Sheikh Safaa spoke to me inside the prayer room. It had a green carpet and a s.h.i.+ny model of the shrine in Najaf. On its walls were verses from the Koran about Judgment Day and a picture of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr and Muqtada. Sheikh Safaa looked extremely young; his stylistically groomed beard was still not fully mature. He was very thin, with a long narrow nose. He wore modern wire-framed gla.s.ses and had a white imama (turban) balanced on his ears. As we spoke he held his mobile phone and prayer beads in one hand, gesticulating with the other.

He confirmed that the husseiniya belonged to the Office of the Martyr Sadr, which had permitted the Dawa Party to use some rooms as an office. "They are old people, and they are even not capable of carrying a weapon," he said. "The American forces denied that they attacked the husseiniya. They said they just attacked the Dawa office, but it was a lie. The truth is, they entered both the Dawa office and the Mustafa Husseiniya, and they killed in a very barbaric way . . . and n.o.body expected the Americans would do that, especially those who saw films about freedom, about America."

The young Sheikh Safaa also thought the raid was meant to send a political message. "After the Samarra bombing," he explained, "the Americans started escalating political pressure against Jaafari and other s.h.i.+tes to prevent Jaafari from being the prime minister, because he doesn't look after their interests. They think that Jaafari is the closest man to the Sadr Current, and they don't like the Sadr Current to have a friend in the prime minister's position."

Sheikh Safaa warned that his people were irate. "I have seen the feelings of the people in the last few days," he said. "They were very upset from the presence of the occupation. One of the demands put forth by the Sadr Current was that the occupation forces apologize and compensate the families of the victims. America should not kill and compensate. We don't want your compensation; just stop killing. Why do you kill and then compensate? People from different ages and backgrounds were killed in this mosque. Not everyone was a soldier in the Mahdi Army. There were old people from the Dawa Party and visitors to the Dawa Party and people praying. That's why the people in Shaab City are very angry. So the condition was not to let America go inside Shaab City again. We witnessed an American aggression, and maybe with the hands of Iraqis who work with the occupation forces."

The sheikh had been present for the raid. "We were surprised at six o'clock, which is half an hour before the prayer, by a large number of Humvees and another kind of wheeled armored vehicle," he said. "Their entrance was silent. They surrounded the husseiniya from everywhere. They started firing random heavy shots. It didn't have the sound of a Kalashnikov and cla.s.sic light weapons. The major sound was the dushka and a heavy belt-fed machine gun. They also used bombs and grenades to attack the husseiniya." I was impressed by his detailed knowledge of weapons. "They came in a very ugly and barbaric way, and they were very quick," he continued. "People tried to run away and go out of the building. Because I am the imam of the mosque I have a family in my house, so I was busy taking my family outside. I have four children, and they were very scared. Until now the condition of the children is not stable. My mother is still not stable. We took her from the hospital yesterday, because of the heavy sound of the bullets and bombs."

On the evening of the raid, he said, "many infantry soldiers entered the building. They started shooting. A lot of the brothers were injured. They took them to a single place and grouped them together and executed them. One of them had a black band on his forehead because he was a sayyid. He was the one who got the most number of bullets in his body. He lost all of his brain outside his head, and I think you have already seen his brain. They went inside the shrine with a grenade, which injured a lot of people who were praying at that time. The mosque should be a place for people who want to feel safe and secure. When the occupier came to this country, we lost the security, and security is one of the most important favors that G.o.d gives to us. It's true that there was a strong oppression on Iraqis from the former regime. America came to Iraq proclaiming its liberation, and freedom and democracy and pluralism, but America proclaimed one thing and we saw something else. We saw freedom, but it is the freedom of tanks and democracy of Hummers, and instead of multiparties we saw multiple killings of people in a variety of ugly ways."

But the Americans did not just kill people at the husseiniya; they also tortured the men and looted the area. "One was injured with bullets and killed with knives," Sheikh Safaa said. "More than one body was tortured, his eyes were taken out, and we saw them naked after death. Some of them were very old men. The Americans stole all the light weapons: one pistol and two or three guns. Also they stole money and the two computers. They destroyed everything, broke gla.s.s, and the religious school for women. Then they blew up the cars and there was more heavy shooting."

After I left Sheikh Safaa asked Firas if I was "clean"-meaning, was I to be trusted-so that he could be sure of protecting me in the event someone tried to intercept me as I made my way home. His a.s.sistant, Abu Ha.s.san, asked Safaa the same thing about me.

That Thursday, March 30, after I visited Humineya, Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, spokesman for Multinational Forces-Iraq, gave his weekly press briefing in the Coalition Press Information Center. He stood before American and Iraqi flags wearing pressed fatigues with two stars on his collars. His face remained without expression or emotion, and he spoke in a clipped, rapid-fire style, not in sentences. As he listed his ideas, which he kept simple and repeated, his hands sliced the air to emphasize points in rhythm with his words.

"Our operations continue across Iraq towards the identified end state," Lynch said. "An Iraq that is at peace with its neighbors and is an ally in the war on terrorism, that has a representative government and respects the human rights of all Iraqis, that has security forces that can maintain domestic order and deny Iraq as a safe haven for terrorists. Now we're making progress there every day." He explained that attacks against the coalition forces were concentrated in three provinces: Baghdad, Anbar, and Salah Al-Din. He didn't say that these areas were where U.S. troops were concentrated and where some of the biggest cities were located. "The enemy," he said, "specifically the terrorists and foreign fighters, specifically Al Qaeda in Iraq, the face of which is Zarqawi, is now specifically targeting Iraqi security force members and Iraqi police. In fact, the number of attacks against Iraqi Security Forces has increased 35 percent in the last four weeks compared with the previous six months." General Lynch told the story of Sunni recruits who joined the army even after some recruits had been killed in a suicide bombing. "If that's not a testimony to the courage and conviction of the Iraqi people, I don't know what is. They're united against Zarqawi. As we've talked about before, counterinsurgency operations average nine years. The people who will win this counterinsurgency battle against Zarqawi and Al Qaeda in Iraq are the Iraqi people. And indications like that show their courage and their convictions and their commitment to a democratic future. Amazing story."

He switched slides to a satellite image showing the Mustafa Husseiniya but calling it "Tgt Complex." Several blocks away was a building the slide described as the Ibrahim Al Khalil Mosque, and even farther away was a building incorrectly identified as the Al Mustafa Mosque. "Last Sunday," he began, "Iraqi special operations forces had indications that a kidnapping cell was working out of this target complex." He pointed to the satellite image. "This was led, planned, and executed by Iraqi special operations forces, based on detailed intelligence that a kidnapping cell was occupying this complex." He pointed at the husseiniya again. "The operation consisted of about fifty members of Iraqi special operations forces and about twenty-five U.S. advisers. The U.S. advisers there purely in an advisory role. They did none of the fighting. There wasn't a shot fired by U.S. service members during conduct of this operation. They surveyed the battlefield in advance, looking for sensitive areas, and they said, Okay, there are mosques in the area, but the nearest mosque is about six blocks from the target complex, so the decision was made to do the operation, focused on this kidnapping cell, and try to rescue a hostage, an Iraqi hostage. Operation planned, led, and executed by Iraqi special operations forces. They got in the area with their vehicles. They immediately started taking fire, from this complex," he said, pointing again to the map. "Now remember, many buildings in that compound and many rooms in the building. They took fire right away, they returned fire." Once inside, "they had additional gunfire exchange."

I remembered my visit. There were no signs of any gun battle or any fire coming from inside the husseiniya-no random bullet holes, no Kalashnikov sh.e.l.ls (although they could have been picked up). The entire affair had seemed very one-sided.

"All told," Lynch continued, "sixteen insurgents were killed, eighteen were detained. We found over thirty-two weapons, and we found the hostage, the innocent Iraqi, who just twelve hours before was walking the streets of Baghdad. He was walking the streets of Baghdad en route to a hospital to visit his brother, who had gunshot wounds. He was kidnapped and beaten in the car en route to this complex." He pointed to the Mustafa Husseiniya again. "When he got there, they emptied his pockets. They took out his wallet, and in the wallet was a picture of his daughter. He asked for one thing. He said, 'Please, before you kill me, allow me to kiss the picture of my daughter. That's all I ask.' The kidnappers told him, 'Hey, we gotcha, and if we don't get twenty thousand dollars sometime soon, you're dead.' And they showed him the bare electrical wires that they were gonna use to torture him, and then kill him, and they said, 'We're gonna go away and do some drugs, and when we come back, we're gonna kill you.' He was beaten. He was tortured. He was tortured with an electrical drill. Twelve hours after he was kidnapped, he was rescued by this Iraqi special operations forces rescue unit. He is indeed most grateful. He is most grateful to be alive, and he is most grateful to the Iraqi special operations forces. The closest mosque was six blocks away. When they got close to the compound, they took fire, and they returned fire. When they got inside the rooms, a room in this compound, they realized this could have been a 'husenaya,' a prayer room. They saw a prayer rug. They saw a minaret. They didn't know about that in advance, but from that room, and from that compound, they were taking fire. In that room, and in that compound, the enemy was holding a hostage, and torturing a hostage. And in that room, and in that compound, they were storing weapons, munitions, and IED explosive devices. Very, very effective operation, planned and executed by Iraqi special operations forces."

When asked who the enemy the previous Sunday might have been, Lynch responded that "we had no indication, no specific indication, what group these people came from. This was clearly a kidnapping cell that we'd watched for a period of time. There were indications that it was an active cell, and that's why the operation was planned by the members of the Iraqi special operations forces. Now, I can't tell you which particular unit or if they were from the Mahdi militia. I don't know. . . . Extremists, terrorists, criminals-it's all intertwined. We have reason to believe, and evidence to support, that the terrorists and foreign fighters are indeed using kidnapping as a way to finance their operations. And the story that I told about Sunday night's kidnapping could be told many more times."

The news of the American raid was-for once-greeted with delight by Sunnis, who were used to seeing s.h.i.+tes celebrating when the Americans. .h.i.t Sunni targets. But what really happened at the husseiniya? There was indeed a Sunni prisoner in the Mustafa Husseiniya, the last suspect in the killing of Haitham al-Ansari (see previous chapter). Half the Mustafa Husseiniya was controlled by the Sadrist hawza, with Sheikh Safaa as the spiritual leader. The other half was controlled by a man named Abu Sara, who led a Mahdi Army death squad known as a "special group." Abu Sara was an ex-Baathist and ex-member of Saddam's fedayeen militia. Safaa hated him, my friend Firas told me, because he was against armed men coming to the mosque. When the Americans struck just before the evening prayer, Abu Sara and his men had not yet arrived; they were still on their way to pray. The Americans killed ten people inside and seven outside, but they were innocent. They released the suspected Sunni killer, and he fled to Syria.

The Americans called the raid Operation Valhalla. It was conducted by the U.S. Army's 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), commanded by Lieut. Col. Sean Swindell and an Iraqi Special Forces unit they were training. The target was one individual who left shortly before the soldiers arrived, though I was never able to confirm what he was suspected of doing. "We came under fire and at that time had to protect ourselves," an American partic.i.p.ant told me. "Iraqi Special Operations forces and U.S. adviser forces, as we got to the area, came under intense fire from all directions, including within the husseiniya. We a.s.saulted and searched the targeted area. We stumbled upon the Sunni prisoner by accident during the course of the operation. There was one hostage rescued. He stayed with us for a number of months doing small work because he was extremely scared for his life."

One Iraqi Special Operations soldier was wounded. After the raid a senior sheikh from Ur came to complain about the raid to the Americans, along with three or four young "henchmen" of his. "He was one very bad guy," said the American who took part in the raid. "One henchman asked why we were shooting at certain buildings. We showed him we were taking heavy fire from the husseiniya. He said they were not shooting at us but at the helicopters." I asked the American soldier which group they were targeting. "We did not make the distinction. Bad guys were bad guys. The sheikh and his henchmen received the same briefing that was given to the prime minister and agreed with everything we presented. They were impressed with what we knew and acted on."

The Americans insisted that immediately after the battle the dead bodies were removed from the husseiniya along with their weapons so that it would appear to be a one-sided attack on men in a mosque. The Americans say they conducted an investigation and that the unit effectively halted operations for a month. Some of the men in the unit had cameras on their helmets, which apparently corroborated their versions in the investigation and contrasted with the version presented by reporters on the scene.

The next day, March 31, I returned to the Mustafa Husseiniya for Friday prayers. The neighborhood was shut down. Roads were blocked with tree trunks, trucks, and motorcycles. Mahdi Army militiamen sat on chairs on the main road asking for IDs and observing the men slowly walking in the sun to the noon prayer. The militiamen, most of whom were in their twenties and thirties, sported carefully groomed beards. Some wore all black; others wore cotton s.h.i.+rts that said "Mahdi Army" and named their unit within the militia. Some wore Iraqi police-issued bulletproof vests, and many carried police-issued Glock pistols and handcuffs at their sides. They were off-duty policemen.

By the time I arrived, thousands of people were seated in the bright sun. They wore sweatpants or dishdashas, and many of the older men had head scarves on their heads. Plastic, rubber, and leather slippers and shoes lined the street. As the men a.s.sembled, they stopped by wooden boxes to pick up a torba, a medallion-shaped piece of earth from Karbala upon which their foreheads would rest when they bowed to the ground. When they found an empty spot on the street, they opened their prayer rug, placing the torba at the front edge.

A wooden pulpit was set up across from the Husseiniya. Behind it a large truck was parked. It was covered in a green cloth, and a large painting of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr stood on its bed. Mahdi Army men patrolled the street and stood atop the husseiniya and on the rooftops of neighboring buildings, pacing back and forth, silhouetted against the bright sky. In the front row sat dignitaries such as Sadrist National a.s.sembly member Fattah al-Sheikh and key clerics from the movement like Abdul Hadi al-Daraji. Hundreds of men brought umbrellas with them to provide some shelter from the sun. Young men in baseball caps with exterminator packs on their backs walked through the crowd spraying people with rose water to cool them off. Loudspeakers on the road facing different directions blasted the call to prayer.

As the call ended, a man stood up to yell a hossa. "d.a.m.n Wahhabism and Takfirism and Saddamism and Judaism, and pray for Muhammad!" The crowd yelled back, "Our G.o.d prays for Muhammad and the family of Muhammad!" They shook their fists, "And speed the Mahdi's return! And d.a.m.n his enemies!" Sheikh Hussein al-a.s.sadi stood up behind the pulpit, wearing a white turban and white shroud to show he was prepared for martyrdom. "Peace be upon you," he greeted the crowd. "And upon you peace and the mercy of G.o.d and his blessings," the crowd murmured back. Some in the crowd filmed the sermon on their mobile phones.

"I ask everybody to sit down except those who are on duty," he said, referring to the militiamen providing security. "Before I begin I want to express my sympathy to Muhammad and all the imams, especially the Mahdi, for the martyrs of the Mustafa Husseiniya." They had been martyred by international Zionism, world imperialism, and the American occupation, his angry voice echoed against the city's walls. "We demand that the Iraqi government expel the Zionist American amba.s.sador from Iraq and do not accept any apology from him. . . . We demand the release of all the prisoners of the outspoken hawza," he said, along with the prisoners "who survived the Zionist ma.s.sacre," as he called the raid. He demanded that an Iraqi court supervised by the clergy try the perpetrators of the Mustafa Husseiniya attack. He demanded that occupation forces be prohibited from entering eastern Baghdad at any time. He rejected any need to investigate the attack. It was as clear as the murder of Hussein, he said. He complained that s.h.i.+tes were still waiting for the results of the investigations of the Kadhimiya bridge disaster, the Samarra and Karbala explosions, and other ma.s.sacres s.h.i.+tes had faced. "We demand the execution of the Wahhabi American takfiris who were arrested and confessed in front of all who saw them," he said. He blamed the Americans for killing Sunnis and throwing bodies in the Sadda area near Sadr City to ruin the city's reputation and blame its residents for committing crimes. "The American Zionist forces have declared that they have handed the security file to the Iraqi government," he said, "so what is the reason to violate this and attack the holy mosque of G.o.d?" The American and Iraqi governments had negotiated agreements without Parliament's review; he demanded that the Iraqi people be told what they were. He demanded that the Iraqi Security Forces declare whether they "work with the American forces against unarmed Iraqis or for Iraq?"

A man in the crowd shouted a hossa. "As we learned from the second Sadr, history will be written with the blood of the pious, not the silence of the fearful!" The crowd shouted, "Our G.o.d prays for Muhammad and the family of Muhammad! And speed the Mahdi's return and d.a.m.n his enemies!"

The sheikh continued. "We ask G.o.d to support the outspoken hawza of mujahideen and the heroes of the Mahdi Army against the enemies of Islam, and to keep the Friday prayer going and to be a fork in the eye of the enemy America and especially Israel."

People ask why the outspoken hawza was silent, he said. "But this is the silence before the storm," he answered, warning the Americans and Zionists that he knew what they wanted to do to Muslims. "We already know very well, and I thank G.o.d for that. We already know what is going on in the dirty minds of the monkey infidels. They have a conspiracy against Islam and Muslims."

America "brought war to the Iraqi people and ended the wars with sanctions, it was trying to make Muslims hungry. . . . Today it slaughters our sons, and it has started doing the same things Saddam did, and this is exactly the same way Saddam killed us, and George Bush the Cursed said he came to get rid of Saddam's killings but instead he brought Israel's killings, and they started doing it themselves in the holiest places in Iraq, and it's only because they have hated Islam since the beginning and they hate the prayer because it is the way of communication between the servant and his lord, and they are trying to kill the belief." What was the difference, he asked, between Saddam's ma.s.sacres of s.h.i.+tes in mosques and the American raid on the Mustafa Husseiniya?

The spirits of the martyrs demanded that those responsible for the ma.s.sacre at the Mustafa Husseiniya be exposed. The Zionists were killing and torturing injured Iraq, he said, but members of the government were too busy stealing and enriching themselves and were too afraid to lose their positions to speak the truth, as was the clergy. He asked the crowd of thousands to shout "We will never be oppressed!" and they thundered in response. Only the outspoken hawza of the mujahideen represented the voice of the Prophet Muhammad and his family, and they were the voice of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. The jihad being waged by Muqtada's hawza was the Mahdi's jihad, and n.o.body could defeat them. "And today the outspoken hawza promises the martyrs that were killed in Iraq by the hands of the Zionist takfiris that we will return their aggression with a thousand aggressions. And we will step on the face of the Zionist amba.s.sador if he stays in Iraq, and we will do that with our heroes of the Mahdi Army, and we will break all the legs that carried aggression on the houses of G.o.d and shed the blood of our brothers, and if the government is unable to prosecute the criminals in front of all people, then we will apply justice ourselves as much as we can, and the battalions of the Mahdi Army will never be handcuffed in case the government suspends their case, just like all the other suspended cases, like the ma.s.sacres of Karbala and Kadhimiya and the destruction of the domes of the two imams in Samarra and other shedding of believers' blood. . . . The government should not put their hands in the hands of those who killed us, and we want them to prove their Iraqi ident.i.ty and Islamic ident.i.ty, and we want them to release our prisoners, or an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

As the streets of Ur and Shaab filled with thousands of men indolently strolling home in the heat or heading to minibuses and trucks to depart, across town, in the western neighborhood of Ghazaliya, prayer was also ending, and several hundred Sunni men were leaving the Um Al Qura Mosque, which had once been so central to the resistance. It had once been a symbol of Sunni domination; now it was a symbol of vulnerability and fear. Gruesome posters lined the mosque's walls, depicting slain members of the a.s.sociation and other murdered Sunnis. "Our martyrs are twinkling stars in the Iraqi sky," said one, while others showing dead bodies demanded "yes to the state of law," "no to organized government terrorism," "no to endless sinning," and lamented what they described as a "ma.s.sacre of freedom," and "ma.s.sacre of seven innocent men." I was stunned by the s.h.i.+ft in tone.

A few days later, on April 4, 2006, I was back at the Um Al Qura Mosque, waiting in the sun after a friend who moonlighted for the a.s.sociation of Muslim Scholars told me the bodies of Sunnis slain in sectarian violence were coming from the morgue. In front of the Um Al Qura Mosque, Iraqi National Guardsmen manned their machine guns on a pickup truck. Ghazaliya had long been one of Baghdad's main no-go zones for foreigners, journalists, and even many Iraqis. When American or Iraqi army or police forces were not looking, Sunni militias openly patrolled its streets and stopped cars at checkpoints to look for suspicious outsiders. s.h.i.+tes living in Ghazaliya had been receiving death threats, if they were lucky, warning them to leave the neighborhood. As I stood in the parking lot with a few Iraqi cameramen working for local and international media, I could hear exchanges of fire in the distance; later I saw American Humvees and Iraqi police in pickup trucks circling the mosque.

Finally we heard the sounds of wailing coming from the mosque's gate. Two trucks accompanied by men on foot made their way to the mosque. The men were crying and beating themselves, stopping to collapse on the ground or raise their arms in desperation, then shouting, "There is no G.o.d but Allah!" Their screams competing with one another, they cursed the killers. "f.a.ggots!" "Brothers of wh.o.r.es!" they shouted. "This is a disaster! What did they do?"

"We are almost extinct! They broke our backs!" "The pimps! The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! The infidels!" I asked one of the men to tell me what had happened. "They took them in the south from their shops. They took them to an office, and then they took their car. We found them yesterday in the fridge in the morgue. They live in Ghazaliya. Four brothers. And two were father and son!" he began crying again.

An older man wearing tribal clothes and hiding his face with his head scarf shouted, "This is an Iranian wave, arranged by Iran. We are Muslims, and this is our country. Why are they doing this to us? And they are saying, 'We are the Mahdi Army.' Did the Mahdi tell them to do that? One of them is only twelve years old!" He explained that the dead were Sunni shopkeepers. "They took them to Kut, and they executed them. In the Jihad district they killed fifty-seven people. They arrested them and executed them. Everywhere they kill Sunnis." He added that when relatives came to pick up their bodies from the morgue, they too were kidnapped.

The trucks stopped at the mosque's steps. The rugs were removed from on top of them, and the wooden coffins were placed on the ground, their covers pulled to the side, revealing bodies hidden by plastic. "Open the bags so they can see," one man said. "This one is only ten years old," cried a man. "They killed him by strangling. This is a kid. Should he be strangled? Look at him. Open the bag, let them see!" The boy did indeed look about ten, his face swollen and eyes closed, thick st.i.tches lining his chest.

They opened another coffin. "This one was tortured before killing!" one man shouted. "Look at his teeth. They pulled out his teeth! He was helping his father. Why did they do that to him? Is it only because they are Sunnis?" he raised his hands up and shouted, "Allahu akbar!" (G.o.d is great!) I looked at the corpse's bruised face: a middle-aged man missing some of his front teeth. "G.o.d curse the oppressors!" the mourners shouted, embracing the coffins and corpses. "Even Jews wouldn't do this!" shouted one man. "They say that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, so how do you explain this?"

Then somebody decided the show was over. The coffins were placed on the trucks and driven away, followed by the Iraqi journalists. Members of the AMS remained outside, discussing a Sunni man who had gone to visit his relatives in the hospital but was kidnapped by six men. "They control the hospitals," said one man, referring to Muqtada's followers. He noticed me filming him and angrily covered the lens with his hand. I was later told that he was head of security for the AMS.

On my way back I drove through the wealthy Mansour district, where I had lived briefly in my first months in Iraq. Two bodies were lying dead on the main street. It was a normal sight. I later found out they had been Iraqi staff of the emba.s.sy of the United Arab Emirates. That day a Sunni friend from Amriya called me distraught because his s.h.i.+te neighbor and friend had been killed the previous night. It was normal. At least ten bodies were found in Amriya that day. A Sunni man who picked up one of them to bring him to the hospital was also killed, for doing just that. On a different day a friend from Amriya told me that two cars pulled up in front of a s.h.i.+te home and riddled it with machine-gun fire. On another typical night, s.h.i.+tes in a Sunni neighborhood saw masked men in their garden. They found a letter ordering them to leave. The following day they did. One day a friend from Amriya was delayed meeting me because seven bodies had been found on his street.

The Road to Najaf.

Three days later I was on the road to Najaf from Baghdad, a key pilgrimage route for Iraq's s.h.i.+tes. It was fraught with the unique new dangers of the country's civil war. I drove down with s.h.i.+te pilgrims, aware that the day before a minibus much like mine carrying s.h.i.+tes had been sprayed with machine-gun fire from two cars in the Sunni town of Iskandariya, about twenty-five miles south of Baghdad. Five of the pilgrims had been killed. My companions were a young man called Ahmed, his mother, and their friend Iskander, who was the driver. They hailed from Sadr City, and we were going to see Muqtada speak in the Kufa Mosque, outside Najaf.

Numerous Iraqi police and Iraqi National Guard checkpoints slowed our progress. At each stop the policemen would peer through the driver's window and ask where we were going. "We're a family from Sadr City," Iskander would say, or sometimes just "from the city," since the men would know what he meant. "We're going to Najaf." We would be waved along with a smile: "Go in peace." We drove past brick factories and palm groves, and as we approached Najaf we were stopped more and more often, our minibus searched, our bodies patted down. Finally all roads were closed off to vehicles. Our minibus was parked on a sandy lot with hundreds of others. Some had wooden coffins lashed on top. They were to be buried in the City of Peace, the vast cemetery for s.h.i.+tes who seek to lie close to Imam Ali in Najaf. ING men waved metal detectors over all visitors. The day before, there had been a ma.s.sive car bomb on this very road. Men waited with pushcarts to carry the feeble, or load as many shrouded women as possible, or carry coffins. Other coffins were carried on relatives' backs in long processions sometimes led by clerics. We walked past three minibuses that had been crushed and blackened by the previous day's explosion and one car that had flipped over. ING men in blue fatigues surrounded the charred wreckage and beseeched the many pilgrims who stopped to stare in silent wonder, "Please, brothers, move on."

Nearby was the cemetery set aside for the martyrs of the Mahdi Army. Hundreds of tombs of young Mahdi Army fighters had flags waving on them. Pictures of the dead wielding weapons were placed behind gla.s.s on the stones. Many streets in Sadr City had been named after Mahdi Army men who had been martyred by the Americans on those streets. My friend Ahmed, himself a Mahdi Army fighter, visited the tombs of his friends after regaling his mother with tales of their derring-do fighting the Americans in Sadr City. Ahmed was related to an important s.h.i.+te politician, and his oldest brother led Mahdi Army fighters and planted roadside bombs for American convoys. I was told Ahmed dabbled in this as well.

We continued to the Shrine of Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. A steady stream of pilgrims went through the stringent security procedures to enter. Coffins were carried into the mosque to circle around Ali's tomb before burial. Iranian pilgrims had their pictures taken in front of the shrine by enterprising Najaf boys with enough Farsi to take advantage of the dazed pilgrims. Pilgrims kissed the wooden doors and entered the vast courtyard where the golden shrine s.h.i.+mmered in the sun. Families sat in the shade and picnicked; others prayed together or strolled around. Outside, boys sold souvenir photos of s.h.i.+te leaders such as Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Sistani, Muqtada al-Sadr and his father.

Kufa, a town just outside Najaf, was dominated by followers of Muqtada. As we approached the Kufa Mosque, all roads were once more blocked off. We were searched by members of the Mahdi Army. Lugubrious latmiyas (mournful songs) echoed from the stalls, describing in rhythmic beats the death of Hussein, grandson of the Prophet, and professing loyalty to him. The mosque's thick walls looked fortified. It had been used as a base for the Mahdi Army during the 2004 intifada, when thousands of fighters battled the Americans in Najaf and Kufa. Inside the mosque fighters had lined up to receive food and advanced weapons training. Small groups were instructed in how to use grenades and grenade launchers. Crates full of weapons had been stored in the mosque in those days, as well as in Muqtada's office in Najaf.

It was in Kufa that Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr made his forty-seven famous sermons, beginning in 1998, when Saddam relaxed restrictions on such activities. Saddam promoted Sadr at first, viewing him as an Iraqi nationalist and as a pliable tool to use against s.h.i.+te leaders of Iranian or Pakistani descent, and against Iran. But Sadr, like Thomas a Becket, did not show sufficient loyalty to the ruler. In his last sermons he even criticized Saddam. In 1999 Sadr and two of his sons were shot on the road by unknown a.s.sailants. The government accused rival s.h.i.+tes of the murder and executed the suspects, but Sadr's followers blamed Saddam and rioted. Many were killed in Sadr City, then known as Saddam City. Some Sadrists blamed the Hakim family or Iran for the a.s.sa.s.sination. After the war Muqtada took over the Kufa Mosque, and it was to this mosque that he retreated in April 2004 when his followers began their intifada, urging them to "make your enemy afraid" and a.s.suring them that he would not abandon them. "Your enemy loves terror and hates peoples, all the Arabs, and censors opinions," he said.

Kufa has a mystical importance to s.h.i.+tes. Some Iraqi s.h.i.+tes believe Kufa Mosque is the oldest mosque in the world. Imam Hussein's cousin, Muslim bin Aqil, was buried there after being slain by the same traitors who would later kill Hussein. Many s.h.i.+tes believe that the Mahdi will return to that mosque, descending down from heaven onto its dome.

In the market outside stands sold souvenir pictures or key chains of Muqtada and his father, as well as books by s.h.i.+te thinkers like Muqtada's uncle Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, the most important s.h.i.+te theologian of the twentieth century, who led the Dawa Party and was executed along with his sister Bint al-Huda by Saddam in 1980. (Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr was known as the first martyr, and Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr was known as the second martyr.) Books by Khomeini were also available. One stand sold films of Muqtada's sermons as well as panegyrics to Muqtada and films depicting his men battling the Americans. A large group of men stood around to watch these films. Other stands sold newspapers a.s.sociated with Muqtada's movement, such as Al Hawza and Sharikat al-Sadr (Rays of Sadr).

A crowd a.s.sembled to receive Muqtada's latest bayan, a piece of paper with his rulings on certain questions. That week's bayan was formulated in a typical way: a real or hypothetical question was posed, followed by Muqtada's response.

"Seyiduna al mufadda," began the question, meaning, "Our Lord, for whom we sacrifice ourselves." "In the Iraqi streets these days, there is a lot of talk . . . about militias. And as your eminence knows, some politicians cla.s.sify the army of the Imam al-Mahdi, G.o.d speed his appearance, under this t.i.tle. So do you cla.s.sify the army under this t.i.tle just like the case with the brothers in the Badr Organization and the Kurdish pesh merga, or do you cla.s.sify it under another cla.s.sification, and does your eminence encourage its members to join the government inst.i.tutions, especially the security and military ones?" The question was signed by a "group of members of the Mahdi Army," and whether they were real or not, it was clearly also an official attempt to distinguish the Mahdi Army from the Badr Organization, which belonged to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and the pesh merga, which belonged to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

Muqtada provided several answers. He began by defining a militia as an "armed group which is outside the control of the government and which belongs to political parties." "According to my understanding," he wrote, "by armed groups they mean a group that has been armed by a specific party or specific political ent.i.ty. But as you know most of the Iraqis armed themselves by themselves after the collapse of the dirty Aflaqists," he wrote, referring to Baathists by their founder, Michel Aflaq. The Mahdi Army was an outlaw only to oppressive governments, he continued; so as long as the government was legitimate, meaning not oppressive and not a.s.sociated with the people's enemies, then the Mahdi Army was with it "in a single trench." Most importantly, he wrote, "We are not a political party, we are the hawza ilmiya which speaks the truth, and we and the Mahdi Army belong to it, and this is an honor for us in this world and the next world. The fourth answer, the sons of this honest sect [s.h.i.+tes], G.o.d make them victorious, consider themselves soldiers of the imam. . . . And that means their actual leader is the imam himself, G.o.d speed his return." His fifth answer was that "according to what I know, the registered armed militias under the so-called current government are only nine, and the Mahdi Army is not one of them. In addition, the Mahdi Army is not a party and it is not an organization. There is no salary, no headquarters, there is no special organization, there is no arming, and every weapon is a personal weapon, if they have one." Muqtada added that it was the occupiers, the Saddamists, and the takfiris who had provoked these questions. "If they really want to benefit the people," he wrote, "they must fight terrorism and take off its arm, and they should provide security and safety to our patient people. Otherwise they are not protecting Iraqis, and they are not letting the Iraqis protect themselves." Finally, he wrote that the Mahdi Army belonged to the s.h.i.+te leaders.h.i.+p in the hawza, which had refused to dissolve it in the past, "especially after they knew it belongs to the Mahdi," because the s.h.i.+te leaders.h.i.+p were the deputies of the Mahdi. He was both implying that Ayatollah Sistani supported the Mahdi Army and appointing himself one of the Mahdi's deputies.

Rea.s.sured that they could all belong to Muqtada's militia because Muqtada had said so, his followers marched into the mosque, past more security, who asked me to turn on my camera and confirm that it was harmless. Many of the men carried their prayer rugs on their shoulders and set them down on the concrete courtyard. The mosque was being restored, and scaffolding lined some of its walls. It had s.h.i.+ny marble columns and new wooden rafters on its ceiling. Next to each column were grim-faced men wearing dark suit jackets. Beneath the jackets were guns, and they had their arms pressed down both to hide the guns and to reach them quicker. They looked like cruder versions of the Hizballah security men who protected Sayyid Ha.s.san Nasrallah in Lebanon when he spoke in public. In the past they had openly carried Kalashnikovs, but this was considered undignified. More than ten thousand people were in attendance, many of them women, who sat in a separate section. There were more children than I had ever seen at a mosque, for Muqtada was the "cool" cleric, a fighter who defied authority, and he specifically reached out to children, offering them notebooks and stickers for their schoolbooks. As the call to prayer ended, the crowd chanted and sang songs they all knew by heart. For s.h.i.+tes, praying at a mosque is very much a communal activity. Unlike Sunnis, who go to whatever mosque is nearest to their home, s.h.i.+tes take buses to attend the Friday prayers at several key mosques, leading to crowds in the tens of thousands and to expressions of communal pride and solidarity.

Muqtada waddled with his head down as he always did, surrounded by his a.s.sistants and bodyguards. A murmur and then a frisson went through the crowd spreading out to the back, and people stood up to glimpse him. They had not been expecting him to speak that day, but rather one of his deputies. "Ali wiyak!" they thundered, waving their fists, meaning "Ali is with you!" Muqtada was flanked by his two closest friends and advisers. On his left stood the young and very thin Ayatollah Ali al-Baghdadi, originally from Sadr City. On his right stood his more rotund brother-in-law, Riyadh Nuri. Nuri was normally the imam of the Kufa Mosque and had also led Muqtada's Islamic courts, which arrested and tortured people for suspected infractions ranging from h.o.m.os.e.xuality, selling p.o.r.nography, and theft to insulting Muqtada. Nuri lived with Muqtada in the same house and had often taken care of Muqtada's mentally handicapped brother, who died in 2004. He also commanded Mahdi Army fighters, whom he would dispatch to arrest people. Nuri raised his hand to quiet the excited crowd as Muqtada began by reading the normal blessings before the sermon. Like his father, Muqtada spoke quietly, without the emotion many clerics invest in their speeches. Not a talented speaker, he almost seemed to mumble in a gruff monotone.

I had been told by his a.s.sociates that he was not meeting with the media now for security reasons, so the closest I could get to him was sitting before him as he delivered his sermon. "We demand the reconstruction of the shrine in Samarra and protection for it," Muqtada said. "We condemn the malicious hands that exploded the shrines." Muqtada read a verse from the Koran and then switched into Iraqi dialect, as was his style. He kept his eyes down most of the time, reading from his notes and only glancing up occasionally. He spoke of doing the right and preventing the wrong. "This is the time when the right becomes wrong and the wrong becomes right," he said, "when women become corrupt. Occupation became liberation and resistance became terrorism." The occupation had joined the Nawasib, which to Muqtada's followers meant all Sunnis. "Look at both of them," he said, "the occupation and the Nawasib, and look at their values." He called for Muslims to be united. "Which Muslims?" he asked. "The ones who follow the family of the Prophet," meaning s.h.i.+tes. "In the past G.o.d punished people by sending frogs, locusts, lice," Muqtada explained. "Now he punishes them by sending earthquakes, mad cow disease, hurricanes, floods, bird flu, the diseases in Africa, and globalization, armies, politics, solar and lunar eclipses."

Muqtada sat down for a minute, and somebody in the crowd shouted a hossa. "For the love of the oppressed, the two martyrs, the Sadrs, pray for Muhammad and the family of Muhammad!" Thousands of people bellowed, "Our G.o.d prays for Muhammad and the family of Muhammad." Then they waved their fists and continued, "And speed the Mahdi's return! And d.a.m.n his enemies!" In the past they had continued with "and make his son succeed. Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!" But this had recently been taken out of the chant, and Muqtada's hundreds of thousands of followers in the country had dutifully followed.

Muqtada stood up once again. "On the anniversary of the Iraqi occupation," he said, "I want to discuss some issues such as a timetable for the withdrawal of the occupation." He expressed his condolences to all the followers of the family of the Prophet for the raid on the Mustafa Husseiniya two weeks earlier. "That attack was not the first done by the occupation forces," he said. "It is part of a series of bad attacks that attack the civilian and the armed, the police and the army. The occupation started attacking everybody: civilians, army, police, even the Iraqi ministers, the minister of interior and the minister of transportation, and some of the Parliament members and others. It started killing civilians in the streets and in public areas. They are killing us randomly. They drag the cars using their tanks. And they torture the prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Um Qasr and other hidden prisons in Iraq. In addition to causing civil strife and civil war, they made our neighbors our enemies, accusing some of them of sending armed people and others with hosting armed people and another with sowing terrorism."

"We did not have a country under Saddam, and now that Saddam is gone, why can we not have a country?" He added that the occupiers could not prove anything they had accused Iraq's neighbors of doing. "Even though we and our neighbors have one religion and we have one fate, the United States succeeded in dividing us and making us enemies. Instead of reconstructing the shrine of the two imams in Samarra, the occupation is building prisons," Muqtada said, then switched to Iraqi dialect to quip, "preparing them for the Iraqi people."

He returned to cla.s.sical Arabic and continued. "They steal Iraqi resources to torture Iraqis. They arrest a lot of people from any force in Iraq that is against the occupation." Iraqis had gotten used to these attacks, Muqtada said, adding that his father's followers had gone from oppression under "Haddam" (playing on the former dictator's name and replacing it with "the destroyer") to oppression and torture under the occupation. "So be patient, my brothers," he said. "They are trying to plant a civil war. Do not let them drag you into the war. We know that they are going to a.s.sa.s.sinate our clerics and our leaders to make a sectarian and civil war. We will never be oppressed. So do everything not to apply the American idea called democracy." America said it sought democracy for Iraq, but it had changed its mind, Muqtada claimed. It now wanted to grant power to the terrorists, he said, referring to recent American attempts to include Sunnis in the government. "So the American interference in Iraqi politics is very clear," he said, "because you see the American amba.s.sador appear in all the Iraqi conferences, meeting with Iraqi politicians, which we consider a terrible a.s.sault on us. . . . We all know that for every minister there is a foreign adviser a.s.signed by the occupation. This is against the religion. Even the press, when they insult the Prophet Muhammad, they say this is the freedom of the press. And when our press writes something which is a fact but is against America, they say it is calling for terrorism. So this is all proof that the small Satan has gone and the big Satan has come. Everyone knows that we have demanded a timetable for the American withdrawal. They refused our demand because they said scheduling the withdrawal of the occupation is a victory for the terrorists, and that is a bad justification."

Muqtada asked all the nationalist forces in Iraq to help him pressure the occupying forces to schedule their withdrawal. He called for the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference to cooperate with him in what he called "the national project for scheduling the withdrawal of the occupation of Iraq." He explained that the withdrawal should begin in Iraq's stable areas, such as the south, some of the middle (the s.h.i.+te areas), and the north. He demanded a phased withdrawal, beginning in the cities, "but in a real way." He insisted that security be handed to Iraqis, and that Iraqi airs.p.a.ce be used by military planes only with the permission of the Parliament and the governorates. He wanted the Iraqi Security Forces to be trained without the occupiers and all government members to refrain from a.s.sociating with the occupiers. "The Iraqi Parliament should be able to schedule the withdrawal of the occupation from Iraq," he said, "but the withdrawal should be scheduled in steps. Every place the Americans leave, Iraqi forces that are fully trained and fully supplied should replace them. The hot areas-and of course they are on fire-they should be controlled by the national battalions composed of the army, the police and national security forces, and other people's forces, and should be supervised by the Iraqi Parliament. And there should be an operations center to design a good plan to make it stable, and the Iraqi leaders should take some of the responsibility in controlling that."

Muqtada withdrew, and the prayer leader led the mosque in prayer. After prayers ended thousands of excited men rushed the windows and fences along the pa.s.sageway from which Muqtada and his entourage would depart, hoping to see him one last time. "Ali is with you!" they shouted over and over again as he quickly walked by. The crowd slowly made its way out of the mosque as more hossas were shouted. "Curse America and Israel, and pray for Muhammad and the family of Muhammad!" shouted one man, and thousands of departing faithful shouted with him. Then they sang a song known to them all. "Oh Mahdi, oh awaited one, return him safely, this is the son of Sadr."

IN BAGHDAD that same day the important s.h.i.+te Buratha Mosque was attacked, leaving nearly one hundred dead and more than one hundred wounded. It was the second postwar attack on this mosque (it had a long history of being attacked), and it would not be the last, for another suicide bomber struck in June. s.h.i.+te politician Jalaluddin al-Saghir of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq was the imam. He angrily placed responsibility on Sunnis, accusing two Sunni newspapers-Al Basa'ir, the voice of the a.s.sociation of Muslim Scholars, and Al I'tisam, the voice of Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi-of causing the attacks by falsely accusing the Buratha Mosque of being used as a secret prison for Sunnis and of being the site of ma.s.s graves for them.

On the road back to Baghdad my companions could not hide their excitement at having seen Muqtada speak. Ahmed called all his friends on his mobile phone. He repeatedly let me know how lucky I was. It was a quiet ride until we arrived in the southern Baghdad area of Dora. The road was blocked by Iraqi police cars, and we heard gunfights in the distance as we sat in traffic. Dora was a mixed neighborhood, but it was majority-Sunni, and Sunni militias were very strong there. It was once one of Baghdad's nicest neighborhoods, with many expensive homes, but terrorism had brought the prices down, as it had in other unsafe neighborhoods.

IN APRIL 2006 the Mahdi Army attacked a number of high-ranking insurgents, including prominent former Baathists in Baghdad's Adhamiya neighborhood. They captured the suspects and left with them. Irate locals began shooting at members of the Iraqi National Guard (ING), and they accused both the Badr Organization and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards of being involved. In fact, it was a Mahdi Army operation. In the days that followed, Iraqi police fired randomly into Adhamiya. They also shot at generators and cut power cables to punish the residents. Residents could not leave their homes for days in a row. It was more evidence to Sunnis that the state was at war with them.

Following the battles, the a.s.sociation of Muslim Scholars released a statement accusing the Interior Ministry's Special Forces and the s.h.i.+te militias of attacking Adhamiya. "The people of Adhamiya defended their city with honor," the statement said, "and they lost seven martyrs and nineteen injured. We have realized that satellite channels like Hurra and Al Arabiya have changed the truth, and they have shown the Interior commandos and its militias as the helpers who helped the people of Adhamiya from an attack being done by other armed people despite the fact that these forces were the ones who attacked the city. And we saw that the ING leader who is responsible for protecting the city was just watching and doing nothing."

On April 21, 2006, I returned to Adhamiya's Abu Hanifa Mosque-which I had first visited three years earlier, almost to the day-on the Friday following the clashes between local fighters and Iraqi Security Forces. The mosque's security men were so stunned to see a foreigner that they could come up with no objections to my presence. Iraqi National Guardsmen stood watch outside. Following the February 22 Samarra attack, mortars had been fired on Abu Hanifa. It was the most important Sunni symbol that s.h.i.+te militias hoped to attack. The clock tower, which had been damaged by American missiles three years earlier, was been repaired. Outside hung banners different from the ones I first saw in April 2003. Now they were white banners for martyrs from the recent clashes. One gave condolences to Sunni politician Saleh al-Mutlaq from the families of Adhamiya for the murder of his kidnapped brother Taha. Another had a photo of a young man called Muhamad Fawad Latufi Annadawi pasted on it. The banner said he had been martyred "in the battle of Adhamiya on the morning of Monday, April 17, 2006. Another banner was for Latif Yawar Alyas, who was also martyred in the battle of Adhamiya. A black banner notified residents of the death of a woman.

Loudspeakers echoed the call to prayer and the reading of the Koran as locals made their way in, their slippers susurrating on the street. They stopped to be patted down by the mosque's militia. The walls inside were intricately detailed, inlaid with geometric carvings, honeycombed in its dome. About five hundred men prayed quietly. Ibrahim al-Naama, an aged cleric wearing a white hat with a red top, took out his gla.s.ses, donned them, and stood up. He spoke in a raspy and high-pitched voice. As was custom, he began by discussing Islam. "We want to talk about how the Prophet Muhammad was and how his friends were, so we can be like them in these difficult days." He made reference to the writings of Ibn Taimiya, and thanked G.o.d that he was a Muslim and a Sunni. This kind of explicit sectarian pride would have been shocking a year before, but now it was commonplace.

Moving on to the specific matter of "the ugly attack on Adhamiya," he questioned whether the attackers were Muslims and warned that "anyone who kills Muslims on purpose will be in h.e.l.l forever, and G.o.d will prepare a very hard punishment for him." He demanded that the Defense Ministry prevent "other forces," meaning the Interior Ministry, police, and militias, from entering Adhamiya, and that it alone control security. "Do not let other forces interfere in the security issues of Adhamiya," he said.

Iraqis were looking forward to the establishment of the new government, he said, because they hoped it could prevent Iraqi bloodshed. "Therefore any obstacle put in the way of forming the government will increase the bloodshed, and those who are causing it will be responsible before G.o.d." He was referring to the obstinacy of s.h.i.+te parties that were refusing to accommodate Sunni demands for inclusion and sufficient influence. "Who could have imagined that the blood of Iraqis will be the cheapest blood?" he demanded. "This is how the occupiers want to divide the Iraqi people. This is how they want to plant sectarian division. This is how the occupiers succeed in their mission." The Americans hated Iraqis' refusal to be defeatist, as did their "tails," he said, referring to the s.h.i.+te parties such as Dawa and the Supreme Council with a term Iraqis were sure to recognize (Saddam had often called Israel and Britain the "tails of America").

After the sermon there was more silent prayer, ending with each man turning to his left and to his right while still kneeling, and wis.h.i.+ng his neighbors peace as well as the mercy and blessings of G.o.d. Men stood up and shook hands, making their way out of the mosque into the blinding sun. Neighbors stopped to greet one another and chat, smiling. A bulletin board by the mosque's door had two papers stuck on it with pictures of middle-aged martyrs, both wearing Iraqi military uniforms. Men paused to read the signs. Past the heavily armed guards, there were no more radical books being sold, only a vegetable stand and a mendicant woman in black rocking back and forth with her baby on her lap as people walked by. I went to eat lunch in Adhamiya's famous kabob and shawarma restaurant. That afternoon I interviewed a doctor in the neighborhood; he paused every so often when the sound of firefights interrupted our conversation. He was most shocked that even the sanct.i.ty of the hospital was no more, as militias were entering to capture people.

FOLLOWING THE DECEMBER 2005 elections and the victory of the United Iraqi Alliance, as the main s.h.i.+te list was known, U.S. Amba.s.sador Zalmay Khalilzad immediately began working with American favorite Ayad Allawi as well as with the Kurdish leader Ma.s.soud Barzani and various Sunni parliamentary leaders to sideline the s.h.i.+tes and ensure that Prime Minister Jaafari did not remain in office. Jaafari was seen as weak, ineffective, and implicated in Iraq's descent into civil war. s.h.i.+tes already distrusted Khalilzad because he was a Sunni Muslim who was determined to give Sunnis a greater role in the state. The s.h.i.+tes got nervous; the Sadrists, who were strong supporters of Jaafari, were galvanized.

Within the s.h.i.+te camp the contest was between the Supreme Council's Adil Abdel Mahdi and the Dawa Party's Jaafari. But the Supreme Council was seen as too close to Iran, and there were worries that Abdel Mahdi would not be independent, having to answer to Supreme Council leader Hak im. Khalilzad let it be known that he didn't support Abdel Mahdi.

Khalilzad was a "rogue amba.s.sador," an American intelligence official told me. "He was contravening U.S. policy. He unilaterally blocked Adil. It was U.S. policy to reject Jaafari but not Adil, but [Khalilzad] just personally did not like the Supreme Council, while the Wh