Author: Marc Santora
Publication: The New York Times
Date: February 13, 2007
It has been a year since Sunni insurgents
ripped a hole in the glorious dome here of one of Iraq's most sacred Shiite
shrines, shattering its 72,000 golden tiles and unleashing a tide of national
sectarian bloodletting. Not a single brick of the mosque has been moved since.
There has been no rebuilding and no healing;
the million annual pilgrims, and the prosperity they spread, are gone. The
roads south to Baghdad and north to Tikrit are pocked with roadside bombs
and fake checkpoints where travelers are abducted. The citizens of this Sunni
city, who protected and took pride in the Shiite mosque for more than 1,000
years, say they want to lead the reconstruction, but Shiites will not hear
of it.
And a proposal from the Shiite-led government
to send thousands of Shiite troops to provide protection for a reconstruction
project has been met with threats of bloodshed.
Symbols of political paralysis are everywhere
in this country. But few have the potency of the blown-up Mosque of the Golden
Dome, site of the graves of two of the figures most revered by Shiites, the
10th and 11th imams in a line of direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
From the moment the shrine was destroyed,
Iraqis - already accustomed to extraordinary violence - knew that life had
taken an even darker turn. Within hours Shiite death squads sought bloody
revenge, dozens of Sunni mosques were burned and Sunni imams were dragged
out into the street and killed.
[That terrible day, one year ago according
to the Islamic lunar calendar, was commemorated by Shiites from Najaf to Basra
on Monday. But even as they were observing the occasion with a moment of silence,
bombs in busy Baghdad markets left at least 67 more people dead. There were
no commemorations in Samarra, just the ever-present reminder of the mosque
itself.]
Pieces of the blue and gold tiles that adorned
the facade of the great mosque, formally known as the Askariya Shrine, where
graceful Arabic script from the Koran praised God and peace, sit shattered
in the empty courtyard.
There are continuing discussions about rebuilding
the shrine, and the United Nations has been approached. The local Sunni tribal
elders have put forth a plan to rebuild, but it is unlikely that Shiite religious
and political leaders will trust them.
Both groups say reconstruction of the dome
would be a powerful unifying force, a symbol of hope where hope is scarce.
But any large-scale project remains complicated not only by the distrust between
Sunnis and Shiites, but by the precarious security situation in Samarra itself,
where a force of only about 300 national and local police officers is trying
to control a city of about 100,000.
Some of men currently responsible for guarding
the shrine, drawn from the nation's Facilities Protection Services, are considered
suspect, possibly infiltrated by Sunni militants, according to Americans and
Iraqis.
The walls still stand, but the doors are locked,
and no prayers are conducted there. Nearby shops are open but desolate.
Residents, for whom the mosque was a source
of livelihood as well as pride, say they would like nothing more than to have
it rebuilt. But they have no faith in the central government, fearing that
Shiite politicians would use the reconstruction as an excuse to take control
of the mosque.
Before the attack, more than a million Shiites
streamed into the mosque each year, visiting the graves of the 10th and 11th
Imams. They also came to honor Muhammad al-Mahdi, who became the 12th Imam
when he was only 5 years old, in A.D. 872.
Shiites believe that it was here that the
Mahdi was put into a state of divine hiddenness by God to protect his life.
Shiites believe that the Mahdi will return at the end of days, at a time of
chaos and destruction, to deliver perfect justice.
The graves, at the foot of a spiral staircase
some 50 feet below ground, were not damaged in the explosion, a caretaker
said. But the dome, the defining feature of the mosque, renovated in 1905,
was ravaged.
Shiites rarely dare travel to the city now.
The Iraqi police have started constructing
a sniper's post on a roof across the street. When the Americans arrived Saturday
to check up on the effort, it took less than 20 minutes for militants to begin
attacking them. Bullets whizzed over the mosque and the American position.
A stray round hit a civilian standing at the
shrine's southern gate. An American medic pulled him to safety and treated
his wound. The fight was brief, less than half an hour, with the militants
finally scurrying away with the Americans in pursuit. But it was a reminder
of how difficult it would be to secure the site for any major reconstruction
project.
Samarra was untouched in the American-led
invasion of 2003, but since then it has fallen to militants twice, only to
be retaken in major American military operations.
The Americans, who try not to patrol too near
the mosque, keep one base in the city. They acknowledge that if they leave
any time soon, the militants will seize the city again.
The roads running south to Baghdad and north
to Tikrit remain plagued by attacks, mostly with roadside bombs.
The government in Baghdad is discussing a
plan to create a special brigade of 3,500 soldiers to secure the roadways
and protect a team of workers who would rebuild the mosque. But if those soldiers
are primarily Shiites they will not be welcome, Iraqi officials say.
"If they send Shiites from the south,
they will be killed," said Lt. Col. Abdul Jalil Hanni, the commander
of the Iraqi police here. "They should make the brigade with people from
Tikrit and Samarra," he said. "Al Qaeda will still make trouble,
but it can be done."
Residents of Samarra, who are very careful
with their words because militants still hold much of the power here, remain
as devastated by the destruction as the Shiites.
"It was a catastrophe for Samarra and
the Islamic world," said Zuhair Majeed, 26, whose shop is at the foot
of the shrine. "The shrine has been in Samarra for 1,200 years. It was
the people of Samarra who protected it, reconstructed it and served it."
But the people of Samarra also have chosen
not to even clean the rubble from the site, because they believe that the
real culprit in the bombing has yet to be found.
"You must know that the tribal leaders
have not removed a single brick until now, in order not to change the crime
scene," said Sheik Qahtan Yahya al-Salim, the general secretary of the
tribal sheiks' council in Samarra.
Haitham al-Sabaa, of the Badri tribe, a former
chicken farmer from Samarra, was the architect of the plan, American and Iraqi
officials say. He has not been caught.
Before the war Mr. Sabaa was not particularly
religious, old friends say, but joined Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia after the American
invasion. They say he worked with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born
Qaeda leader who was killed by American forces in Iraq last June.
Mr. Zarqawi explicitly wrote that attacking
the apostate Shiites was integral to undermining the American occupation.
Mr. Sabaa, the officials said, was hungry to prove himself in the Qaeda hierarchy
and orchestrated the attack. "For him it was not about religion but about
being a big man," said one person, who recalled many a wild and drunken
evening with Mr. Haitham before the invasion. He is now considered a "prince"
in the Qaeda structure in Iraq, American and Iraqi officials said.
Many residents here have come to believe an
alternative version of how the attack occurred, blaming Iranian agents and
pointing to the fact that the attackers were wearing commando uniforms. But
there is no evidence to support that theory.
What is clear is that the attack was carefully
planned and calculated.
A caretaker at the shrine described what happened
on the day of the attack, insisting on anonymity because he was afraid that
talking to an American could get him killed. The general outline of his account
was confirmed by American and Iraqi officials.
The night before the explosion, he said, just
before the 8 p.m. curfew on Feb. 21, 2006, on the Western calendar, men dressed
in commando uniforms like those issued by the Interior Ministry entered the
shrine.
The caretaker said he had been beaten, tied
up and locked in a room.
Throughout the night, he said, he could hear
the sound of drilling as the attackers positioned the explosives, apparently
in such a way as to inflict maximum damage on the dome. Many Sunnis in Samarra
say they remain as pained by the shrine's destruction as the world's Shiites.
"I still feel sad despite the passing of a year," said Abu Hameed
al-Samaraee, 43, a teacher.
"I can describe what was done as exactly
like what happened to the World Trade Center," he said. "Bad people
used this incident to divide Iraq on a detestable sectarian basis."
