http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5662-2004Jun25.html
Foes of U.S. in Iraq Criticize Insurgents
Clerics and Militiamen Decry Violence
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 26, 2004; Page A01
BAGHDAD, June 25 -- Key Iraqi opponents of the U.S. occupation
expressed unease Friday over the wave of insurgent attacks that killed
more than 100 Iraqis a day earlier, and rejected efforts by foreign
guerrillas to take the lead in the insurgency and mate it with the
international jihad advocated by Osama bin Laden.
The objections -- from anti-U.S. Shiite and Sunni Muslim leaders,
including rebellious cleric Moqtada Sadr, and even from militia
fighters in the embattled city of Fallujah -- arose in part from
revulsion at the fact that victims of the car bombings and guerrilla
assaults in six cities and towns Thursday were overwhelmingly Iraqis.
But they also betrayed Iraqi nationalist concerns that the fight
against U.S. occupation forces risked being hijacked by Abu Musab
Zarqawi, a Jordanian whom U.S. officials describe as a paladin in bin
Laden's al Qaeda network.
"We do not need anyone from outside the borders to stand with us and
spill the blood of our sons in Iraq," Ahmed Abdul Ghafour Samarrae, a
Sunni cleric with a wide following, declared in his Friday sermon at
Umm al Qurra mosque in Baghdad.
Since they were appointed three weeks ago, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi
and members of his U.S.-sponsored interim government have railed
against the car bombings and other attacks. But Friday's show of
disgust -- expressed in mosques and, in Sadr's case, with fliers
calling for cooperation with Iraqi police -- marked the first time
anti-occupation clerics and fighters sided against violence associated
with the insurgency, for which Zarqawi has increasingly asserted
responsibility.
In that light, it could be an important moment in the U.S. struggle to
win acceptance for the military occupation and for the interim
government scheduled to acquire limited authority next Wednesday.
While far from embracing the U.S. occupation or the new government,
the anti-occupation leaders seemed to disavow the bloodiest edge of
the violence and Zarqawi's attempt to make it part of al Qaeda's
vision of international jihad.
"Which religion allows anyone to kill more than 100 Iraqis, destroy
100 families and destroy 100 houses?" raged Samarrae in his sermon.
"Who says so? Who are those people who do this? Where did they come
from? . . . It is a conspiracy to defame the reputation of the Iraqi
resistance by wearing its dress and using its name falsely. These
people hurt the Iraqis and Iraq, giving the occupier an excuse to stay
longer."
Samarrae said he had learned that some Iraqi insurgent leaders have
begun to clash with Zarqawi loyalists, insisting the jihadists do not
represent the "right and true resistance." He warned against those who
he said want to tear the country apart in the name of Islam and
suggested they were foreigners who should not be part of Iraq's
conflict.
In a similar vein, a group of masked fighters in Fallujah stood before
Reuters television cameras and read a statement insisting that the
city's violent struggle against surrounding U.S. Marines is being
carried out by Fallujans, not Zarqawi or other foreign fighters.
"The American invader forces claim that Zarqawi, and with him a group
of Arab fighters, are in our city," said one of the heavily armed men,
reading from a paper. "We know that this talk about Zarqawi and the
fighters is a game that the American invader forces are playing to
strike Islam and Muslims in the city of mosques, steadfast Fallujah."
Shortly after their declaration, the U.S. military launched precision
weapons against what it called a Zarqawi safe house, the third such
strike in less than a week.
In Baqubah, where scores of fighters proclaiming allegiance to Zarqawi
attacked police stations and government buildings in Thursday's
offensive, clerics called on the faithful not to support such attacks.
The attackers, they said in their Friday sermons, were foreigners
attacking Iraqis.
"This is the first time we have heard the minaret broadcast support
for the Iraqi government," said Edward Peter Messmer, the occupation
authority's coordinator for the Baqubah region, 35 miles northeast of
Baghdad. "And it couldn't come at a better time."
Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has fought U.S. troops in the Sadr City slum in
eastern Baghdad and in Najaf, 90 miles to the south, ordered his
followers to lay down their weapons and cooperate with Iraqi police in
Sadr City to "deprive the terrorists and saboteurs of the chance to
incite chaos and extreme lawlessness."
"We know the Mahdi Army is ready to cooperate actively and positively
with honest elements from among the Iraqi police and other patriotic
forces, to partake in safeguarding government buildings and
facilities, such as hospitals, electricity plants, water, fuel and oil
refineries, and any other site that might be a target for terrorist
attacks," said an order from the Mahdi Army distributed in Sadr City.
Interior Minister Falah Naqib said Sadr's militiamen were welcome to
join the police or army as individuals, but not to patrol alongside
regular police units.
Abdul Hadi Darraji, a Sadr spokesman in Sadr City, said Sadr's order
was issued in part to see whether U.S. occupation authorities were
serious about transferring power to Allawi's government. If they were,
he suggested, Sadr's movement could continue cooperating with Iraqi
authorities in combating terrorists who, he said, come from outside
the country.
"This gesture is designed to distinguish between honorable, legal
resistance against the occupation and the dishonorable resistance,
which does not target the occupation, but targets the Iraqi people,"
he said.
Aws Khafaji, a cleric in Sadr's militantly political stream of Shiite
Islam, disowned Thursday's violence even more clearly in a sermon at
the Hikma mosque in Sadr City.
"We condemn and denounce yesterday's bombings and attacks on police
centers and innocent Iraqis, which claimed about 100 lives," he said.
"These are attacks launched by suspects and lunatics who are bent on
destabilizing the country and ruining the peace so that the Iraqi
people will remain in need of American protection."
Sadr's militia, as far as is known, has not been involved in the car
bombings and assaults against Iraqi police and government officials
across the country in recent weeks. His fighters concentrated their
battle against U.S. troops in Sadr City and the Najaf area, although
they also fought with Iraqi police seeking to patrol Najaf until a
cease-fire was established there earlier this month.
Shiite political leaders have sought for several months to persuade
Sadr to disband his militia and transform his organization into a
political movement. He has expressed a tentative willingness to do so.
But his lieutenants have refused to participate in choosing a national
congress due to convene next month, citing what they call a skewed
formula for representing Iraq's ethnic and religious groups.
Correspondent Scott Wilson in Baqubah contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 11:10:05 -0500, Doug White <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> . The insurgency's
> recent actions of attacking and killing foreign workers is having a
> significant effect. Over the weekend for instance a neighbourhood
> militia in Bagdad chased down a group of insurgents and "foreign
> fighters" then handed them over to the coalition forces. All the major
> Sunni and Sh'ite clerics are now actively denouncing the non-Iraqi
> fighters, and more significantly they are calling for the insurgency
> to lay down their arms. Even El Sadr is denouncing them. That is
> major.
>
> larry
>
> If that is really happening, then that is good news indeed.
>
> Doug
>
>
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