Aftermath

by Nir Rosen

  I first visited Baghdad’s Adhamiya district on Friday, April 18, 2003, for the triumphal return of Dr. Ahmad Kubeisi, Iraq’s most famous living Sunni theologian and a television preacher who had been based in the United Arab Emirates. A staunch Sunni bastion in majority-Shiite eastern Baghdad, Adhamiya was named for its mosque of Al Imam al-Adham, “The Greatest Imam,” as the 1,300-year-old mosque and tomb of Abu Hanifa al-Nu’man was called. Abu Hanifa was a ninth-century theologian whose legal judgments are still followed by about half the world’s Muslims. The Abu Hanifa Mosque is Iraq’s most important Sunni shrine, visited by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims a year. It had been a favorite mosque of the former Iraqi government; before the war Iraqi state television often broadcast Friday prayers from there. In the past, the imam, Sheikh Abdul Ghafar al-Kubaisi, had held up a Kalashnikov during his sermons, exhorting his listeners to protect Saddam and his regime. He was now in hiding.

  Adhamiya sits on the east bank of the Tigris River, right across from the important Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiya. Many of Iraq’s Shiites believe that Abu Hanifa was a treacherous student of Imam Kadhim, a key religious leader venerated by Shiites who participated in Kadhim’s killing, and some had a tradition of spitting in the direction of the shrine when they passed by it. Others told a story that Abu Hanifa had committed suicide by throwing himself in a barrel of acid. In fact, my friend Sayyid Hassan Naji al-Musawi, a close ally of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad and a commander in Sadr’s Mahdi Army, once confided to me that Abu Hanifa was an “ibn zina” (son of adultery), and that a “dog is buried there.” Salafis, whose numbers in Adhamiya had grown in the 1990s, also despised the mosque, which was revered by Sufis, because of the Salafi rejection of all shrines and tombs. After the war, posters of Saddam could still be bought in Adhamiya, and some Shiites called it “Saddamiya.” Shiite mosques in the district were frequent targets of Sunni attacks.

  Adhamiya was both very old and very rich, and the former regime found many supporters there. Up-and-coming Baathists would often purchase a house in the district once they could afford it. In March 2003, just before the war started, Gen. Mustafa al-Azzawi—who would command the Iraqi forces that fought the invading U.S. Army in Nasiriya, in southeast Iraq—began building a home in Adhamiya. Saddam himself hid there during the Gulf War of 1991. Afterward he appeared on Iraqi television to thank the people of Adhamiya for helping him, and declared it Baghdad’s original neighborhood.

  On Wednesday, April 8, 2003, Saddam was spotted and filmed at a rally outside the Abu Hanifa Mosque. He wore his military uniform and was flanked by a man resembling his son Qusay. The cheering crowds lifted Saddam up onto a car hood, from where he waved. A voice in the film that was made of the event said, “Conquered people eventually triumph over invaders. Your leadership is not weakened.” On April 10 a fierce gun battle occurred in Adhamiya between members of the First Marine Expeditionary Force and what U.S. Central Command called “an Iraqi leadership group trying to get together for a meeting” in the house of a top Baath official. One vehicle was hit by three rocket-propelled grenades and at least one marine was killed in the seven-hour battle.

  Adhamiya was the last part of Baghdad to fall. The defenders were mostly foreign fighters who regrouped from the rest of the country and tenaciously held out. Twenty-two prisoners were taken from the mosque, including its sheikh, Watheq al-Obeidi, and his two sons. Some of the prisoners were not Iraqi. Inside, a cemetery for “the martyrs of April 10” would be built. Before the gravestones were ready, the names of at least twenty dead foreign fighters—including Egyptians, Syrians, Lebanese, and Yemenis—were written on paper and put into soda bottles stuck into the ground. Foreign fighters who had survived were hidden in mosques or homes by sympathetic locals; some were even driven to the Syrian or Iranian border. The mosque itself was damaged, its walls pockmarked with deep holes and its minaret nearly cracked in two, with a gaping hole left by a missile launched from an American plane several hours after the April 10 battle. A nearby telephone exchange was destroyed by American bombings, and the buildings across from the mosque were blackened from the attacks. A dozen burned-out cars, including Sheikh Watheq’s blue Volkswagen Beetle, blocked traffic. To prevent looting after the battle, Adhamiya’s residents formed a committee of armed volunteers. Life began to return to normal, with the tea houses across from the mosque open and the neighborhood’s men gathering once more to chat and play dominoes.

  A week after the gun battle, as looting was still occurring across Baghdad and the Ministry of Information was emptied and set aflame, loudspeakers atop the U.S. Army’s Humvees warned in Arabic that if the looters did not immediately leave, “there will be consequences.” Meanwhile, the recently returned Dr. Kubeisi warned the Americans in his sermon of the consequences they would face if they did not leave immediately. For Kubeisi’s triumphal return the mosque was covered in banners proclaiming “One Iraq, One People,” “No to America,” “We Reject Foreign Control,” “Sunnis Are Shiites and Shiites Are Sunnis; We Are All One,” “All the Believers Are Brothers,” “Leave Our Country, We Want Peace,” and similar proclamations of national and Islamic unity. Demonstrators chanted “No to America, no to Saddam, our revolution is Islamic!” The angular and white-bearded Kubeisi had been a strident opponent of the war, which he had warned would fail, but shortly after he was proved wrong he made haste from his comfortable life in Dubai for Baghdad, reportedly being flown in from Amman on an official UAE private jet.

  The sermon that followed the prayers elaborated the nationalist sentiments on the banners. Baghdad had been occupied by the Mongols, Kubeisi said, referring to the sacking of what was then the capital of the Muslim world in 1258. Now, new Mongols were occupying Baghdad; they were destroying its civilization and creating divisions between Sunnis and Shiites. The Shiites and Sunnis were one, however, and they should remain united and reject foreign control, he said. They had all suffered together as one people under Saddam’s rule. Saddam had oppressed all Iraqis and then abandoned them to suffer. There were no Sunnis or Shiites, Kubeisi said. All Iraqis were Muslims, and they had defended their country from the Americans and British as a united people. Kubeisi also thanked the Shiites of Basra for “defending their country against the foreign invaders.” He demanded an administration governed only by Iraqis and a council of Shiite and Sunni scholars to oppose any government the Americans tried to establish. “We fear that sectarianism will be exploited by our enemies,” he said, referring to the Americans, and urged unity between Sunnis and Shiites. “We will reconstruct our country,” he said, rejecting American interference and “a government that will oppress us,” calling instead for elections. He mocked the “continuous lies” that the Americans had come to get rid of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. “Where are these weapons?” he demanded. The Americans were the enemies of mankind, and had come for Iraq’s oil, he said. The American occupiers were the masters today, but they should not consider staying in Iraq. “Get out before we expel you,” he said, warning of the humiliation they would suffer. The sermon ended with shouts of “God is great!”

  The parallel with the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258 was ominous. It had shocked Muslims in the thirteenth century. Theologians like Taqi al-Din ibn Taimiya (1263-1328) from Aleppo in modern-day Syria blamed Muslims for failing to be sufficiently devout. A wave of conservatism spread throughout the Muslim world, trying to return Islam to its original purity. Often quoted by Osama bin Laden, Ibn Taimiya is the spiritual father of radical Sunnism, in particular the Wahhabi form of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia and the general Salafi trend dominant in international terror movements like Al Qaeda. Taimiya viewed offensive jihad as a duty of every Muslim and expressed extreme hatred for Shiites, who were treated as apostates. He even blamed Shiites for the Mongol sacking of Baghdad. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian fundamentalist who acts as Al Qaeda’s ideologue, has also relied on Taimiya’s fatwas, written as the Mongols devastated Baghdad. The Saudi
government has been distributing the works of Taimiya throughout the world since the 1950s.

  Across from the Abu Hanifa Mosque I found a shop selling magazines that promoted Taimiya’s thoughts. Perhaps more ominous, many Sunnis blamed Shiites for the betrayal that led to the fall of Baghdad. In the thirteenth century the sultan had a Shiite adviser called Ibn al-Alqami, who was said to have sold out his people and helped the Mongols. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other Salafi jihadists would later curse Shiites as the “grandsons of Ibn al-Alqami” for their collaboration with the Americans, the new Mongols.

  Also in attendance at prayers that day was Sheikh Muayad al-Adhami, whom Kubeisi appointed as the new leader of the mosque. Adhami was angered by the entry of American marines into his mosque the previous week. The marines, who had not removed their shoes and had carried weapons, had violated Iraqi dignity, he said. Kubeisi’s close ties with the previous regime in Iraq would allow him to galvanize the Sunni elite and lead the community that had become disenfranchised with the end of the regime. There were few other Sunni personalities as well-known. His previous five years in exile created the false impression that he too had been opposed to Saddam, and he would attempt to use this to forge ties with former opposition figures who had returned. In the early months of the occupation, Kubeisi’s followers held joint demonstrations and prayers with anti-occupation Shiites such as the Sadrists. Their constant message was “maku farq,” meaning “there is no difference” between Sunnis and Shiites: “We are all Muslims.” But in retrospect they were protesting too much; behind the stentorian insistence that they were all united was the fear that they were not and the knowledge of what would happen should this secret become known.

  When Supreme Council leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim became head of the Iraqi Governing Council in late 2003, he began distributing land in Adhamiya to Shiites in order to increase its Shiite population, and he supported the construction of Shiite mosques there. But these mosques were often attacked, and some were blown up while still being constructed. Tensions continued to escalate. After Saddam’s capture in December 2003, rumors spread in Adhamiya that it was not their beloved leader after all. Residents emerged to celebrate, carrying pictures of Saddam and wielding Kalashnikovs and even RPGs. They clashed with U.S. troops, and locals maintained that U.S. forces were accompanied by the Supreme Council’s Badr Brigade. Others claimed that Iraqi police from Sadr City attacked the Sunni revelers. Residents of Adhamiya accused these forces of raiding the hospital to arrest those they had wounded. It was the first time Sunnis accused Shiite militias or security forces of attacking them.

  Adhamiya remained a bastion of support for the resistance. Although most of the resistance in that area was not Salafist, following the destruction of Falluja by the Americans in late 2004, a large number of Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad fighters moved into a building called Ras al-Hawash, which was close to the Abu Hanifa Mosque. There were foreign fighters among them, and they enjoyed the hospitality of the neighborhood’s families and employed local youths to collect information on their behalf. One test of bravery they gave local youths seeking entry into their group was to challenge them to place the flag of Tawhid and Jihad on the walls of the Abu Hanifa Mosque.

  At the same time as I was tracking the fate of the Abu Hanifa Mosque and the neighborhood around it, I was also curious about the neighborhood of Ghazaliya and would visit it often. Built in the 1980s for Baath Party members and Iraqi army officers, it had twelve Sunni mosques but none for Shiites, even though the area was mixed—Saddam had refused to allow Shiite mosques to be built there. Sunni mosques in Iraq rarely attracted the same large crowds as their Shiite counterparts. Sunnis merely went to the closest mosque in their neighborhood, which in this case was the Um Al Qura Mosque. Built by Saddam at the cost of $7.5 million, the mosque was originally named Um al Maarik (Mother of all Battles) but later changed to Um Al Qura (Mother of Villages), a reference to Mecca. The mosque served as a symbol of Saddam’s turn to Sunni Islam to legitimize his rule, and commemorated his glorious (albeit failed) battle against the United States and its allies in the Gulf War. A plaque by its door said it was “built by the order of President Saddam Hussein, may God keep him.” Its minarets are visible from a great distance, four of which are shaped like Kalashnikovs and four like Scud missiles, and its dome is taller than most in Iraq. The bright white marble mosque is surrounded by a moat shaped like the map of the Arab nations, and has a huge parking lot that has not been full since the heady days of the spring of 2004. Inside it feels more like a Gothic cathedral than any other mosque I have been to. It is silent, with natural light coming in from up high. It is more vertical in its orientation than most, which have a tendency to feel horizontal. Its walls are cream-colored with green and gold decorations. The imam’s voice echoes like a Gregorian chant.

  On July 18, 2003, a day after the old Baath coup anniversary, more than a thousand men with white skullcaps gathered for the Friday prayer and sermon. Signs were still up displaying the mosque’s original name. An adjoining museum contained a Koran allegedly written with Saddam’s donated blood. That day, Dr. Harith al-Dhari, head of the Association of Muslim Scholars, warned that the Americans should think of leaving Iraq to spare them and the Iraqis time, blood, and money. “It is the right of occupied people to resist the occupiers . . . the Iraqis will resist,” Dhari said. Did the Arabs not have the same right to resist occupation and expel the occupiers that other nations had? The Americans had to leave at once, and the Iraqi people would establish their own government, unite, and live as brothers. Dhari commended the members of the resistance, calling them “an honest opposition” of which Iraqis could be proud. He called on them to continue defending Iraq and resisting the occupation.

  Dhari condemned the Interim Governing Council, which, he claimed, had been established by “dishonest parties” and divided Iraq along sectarian lines. It would only cause hostility among the Iraqi people, he said. He was infuriated by the council’s declaration of April 9 as a national holiday, a day he described as “the downfall and surrender of Baghdad,” which should be commemorated with sorrow and pain. Dhari’s anti-Shiism came across obliquely, when he condemned the IGC for allowing one community (the Shiites) to dominate the others, despite statistics to the contrary (meaning he rejected claims that Shiites were the majority population in Iraq). Dhari also condemned exiled opposition leaders who came on the backs of U.S. tanks and called for killing former Baathists. Up to half the country’s population were former Baathists, he said, defending them as pious and well intentioned.

  As his voice built to a piercing, shrill cry, Dhari screamed out about crimes the Americans were committing: breaking into homes, searching women. “Do you agree with this?” he demanded of the crowd. “No!” they shouted back. Dhari reminded his audience that the Iraqis knew how to resist occupation, recalling the 1920 revolution against the British, when Sunnis and Shiites had fought together. As prayers ended and the men streamed out of the mosque, their bellicose spirit continued with shouts of “No to colonialism!” “No to the occupiers!” The crowd chanted rhyming slogans calling for the extermination of the infidel army, for Baghdad to revolt, and for Paul Bremer to follow the fate of Nuri as-Said, the British-protected prime minister who was killed by mobs in 1958. Leaflets distributed during the demonstration contained a statement calling on Muslims around the world to come to their aid to confront the atheist occupying forces and to re-establish the Islamic caliphate to defeat the American and British aggression.

  A few weeks later, on August 11, the Association of Muslim Scholars issued a statement condemning American violation of the mosques, which they said even the Mongols had not done. Iraq’s Islamic endowments were now being looted by criminals “from across the border,” meaning Shiites from Iran. The statement claimed that seventeen mosques had been robbed with the blessing of American forces. While acknowledging Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for his statements protecting Sunni mosques, they blamed the Americans for giving
Shiites too much power, including control over the ministry of religious endowments. These Shiites did not protest the arrests of thirty clerics or the American violation of holy places.

  The Rise of the Sadr Current

  The Sadr Current, as its supporters describe it, was a surprise to all outside observers of Iraq and even most middle-and upper-class Iraqis, but there were clues in the 1990s that this was a growing movement. Following the Gulf War, many Iraqis fled to Saudi Arabia or surrendered to the Americans. In the refugee camps where they were housed, fighting erupted between supporters of the Sadr Current and the rival Supreme Council of Hakim. The Hakim family was perceived to represent the elite; it also backed Ayatollah Khomeini’s system of clerical rule, known as wilayat al-faqih. Although theological differences existed, the bitter rivalry between followers of Hakim and Sadr can best be seen as both a class conflict and a symptom of the resentment of Iraqi nationalist Shiites who stayed in Iraq toward Hakim and his followers, who were in exile in Iran.