- BAGHDAD -- First came the
warning: a sheet of paper stuck to the door of Na'aman Khalil's shop ordering
him to close his off-licence. 'You are corrupting the people of the Earth
and you should stop,' said the message, signed by a group calling itself
the Monotheistic Movement of Jihad.
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- Five days later, a parcel of explosives detonated just
outside the building, smashing the windows and gutting the shop. Four other
alcohol stores along the same street in Baghdad's largely Christian al-Ghadir
district were bombed that same night.
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- No one was injured, but the message was clear. After
the bombings and a spate of other attacks across Baghdad, most of the city's
alcohol shops closed.
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- 'They have achieved their aim. Whatever they wanted,
they have got it,' said Khalil, 24, who says the bombing cost him seven
million dinars (around £2,600) in destroyed stock. 'If I open the
shop again I don't know what action they would take. Probably they would
kill me.'
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- There have been no arrests, but police and many Iraqis
blame the attacks and explosions on supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical
Shia cleric. A few days before the warning letter arrived, several of al-Sadr's
followers met around 30 Shia tribal leaders in the al-Hekma mosque in Sadr
City, the slum area in eastern Baghdad which forms the cleric's powerbase.
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- They produced an edict, obtained by The Observer, in
which they listed nine crimes punishable by death. These included theft,
kidnapping, robbery, spying 'for the Wahabis, al-Qaeda and Saddamists',
trafficking in women, and selling alcohol, pornographic CDs and drugs.
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- The edict, it states, was drawn up because of the 'critical
and sorrowful situation and lack of security and to serve the common good'.
Most of the tribal leaders who signed were from Amara, Kut and Nasiriyah,
towns in southern Iraq where a Shia uprising in April was strongest.
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- 'After the end of the dispute between our army and the
Americans, our army is working on stability and controlling the looters
and other violent groups,' said Sheikh Raed al-Kadhimi, one of al-Sadr's
aides in Baghdad. He boasted of a number of checkpoints and patrols in
Sadr City, and said one had captured several hundred tonnes of stolen sugar,
which he said were returned to the government.
-
- The movement, made up largely of young, unemployed urban
men, has easily moved into the power vacuum left by the absence of properly
trained and equipped Iraqi police and security forces.
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- 'Neither the government nor the police are controlling
the situation,' said al-Kadhimi. 'The al-Sadr tide is the only active tide
in the country.' He denied that his men took part in the attacks on alcohol
shops: 'We have never taken such action. All this has been done by fanatical
individuals.'
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- Much of the movement's strength is in its organisation.
The group has its own religious police, the al-Amur bil Ma'arouf, or Promotion
of Virtue. They have divided Baghdad into three areas: east, west and the
central Kadhimiya area, home to the biggest Shia shrine in the city. Each
area has its own unit. In Kadhimiya it numbers around 40; in the eastern
sector, around Sadr City, it is at least 100 according to Sayed Adnan al-Safi,
an al-Sadr official and editor of one of the movement's newspapers. He
said the groups are unarmed and co-operate on patrols with the regular
police, although the Interior Ministry has denied any involvement.
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- 'In Kadhimiya we have minimised and controlled places
where alcohol is sold. We have controlled the sale of immoral CDs and we
have stopped fraud,' said al-Safi. 'People have begun to understand and
are co-operating with us to control the general violence. We are not issuing
any punishments ourselves, otherwise we would be considered a state within
a state. We pass cases on to the police for punishment.'
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- There is little doubt that the movement is about more
than controlling crime. In the past week al-Sadr's followers have proselytised
among Iraq's minority faiths. A group of them delivered a video of speeches
by al-Sadr to the Armenian Orthodox church in Baghdad. A priest, who asked
not to be named, said the speeches criticised the Christian faith. 'We
have been living in Iraq for 100 years and have never had a problem between
Muslim and Christian,' he said. 'These people are explaining the Koran
in the wrong way. Islam is a religion of peace and humanity.'
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- Until now al-Sadr has boycotted the political process
in Iraq, reviling the government as 'illegitimate'. But according to al-Kadhimi,
the movement could develop a political dimension if its leader ordered
one. 'From the beginning we have been asking for fair and honest elections,'
he said. 'We will have to see what happens [at general elections] in January.'
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,1273782,00.html
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