INVASION OF IRAQ FEROCIOUS YET CAREFUL NEAR HOLY SITES

April 4, 2003
The attack against the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been simultaneously ferocious and careful. Saddam's loyalists resisting the advance on Baghdad have taken an unbelievable pounding from the air and ground. Yet when a group of them Apr. 2 shot at allied troops from a mosque outside Najaf, south of Baghdad, there was no return fire. Under the pressure of combat, such restraint is remarkable. And it might turn out to be pivotal to both the war and Iraqi reconstruction.

Bob Tippee

The attack against the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been simultaneously ferocious and careful.

Saddam's loyalists resisting the advance on Baghdad have taken an unbelievable pounding from the air and ground.

Yet when a group of them on Apr. 2 shot weapons at allied troops from a mosque outside Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad, there was no return fire.

Under the pressure of combat, such restraint is remarkable. And it might turn out to be pivotal to both the war and Iraqi reconstruction.

The allied troops under fire from the mosque understood that this is no ordinary building.

It's the gold-domed Mosque of Ali, housing the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law. Shia Muslims assert unity of religious and secular leadership, which they believe flows divinely from the prophet through his daughter Fatima and Ali. That belief is fundamental to the Shia split from Sunni Muslims, for whom leadership is secular and determined by high-ranking believers.

As Ali's burial place, Najaf is one of the holiest Shia shrines. Forty miles north of Najaf is another holy city, Karbala, where Ali's son Hussein was martyred in a battle against a Sunni leader. Coalition forces have exercised care there, too.

In combat, this can't be easy. It's certainly dangerous.

But it demonstrates that the invasion targets the regime¿not Iraqis or Muslims in general.

The message might be getting through. A huge question hanging over the military operation and its aftermath has been allegiance of Iraq's majority Shia population.

Mercilessly oppressed by Saddam, the Iraqi Shiites harbor grave suspicion about the US government, which urged them to revolt after the Persian Gulf War of 1991 but didn't help.

As coalition forces fastidiously secured Najaf and Karbala this week, however, they received important instruction. Iraq's premier Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued an edict against interference with the invasion. He is believed earlier to have urged resistance to it.

Did the forbearance of those amazingly disciplined warriors at Najaf contribute to the ayatollah's apparent turn?

There's no way now to tell. But it cannot have hurt.

(Author's e-mail: [email protected])