http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/international/middleeast/01neighborhood.html?hp&ex=1141275600&en=17b07b7d60816fcb&ei=5094&partner=homepage
The Mood Riot Crushes Sense of Hope in Iraq Enclave By SABRINA TAVERNISE Published: March 1, 2006 BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 28 - The sheik sat in a simple room and spoke quietly of his loss. A building was burned. Three worshipers were killed. He could not understand why. Johan Spanner/Polaris, for The New York Times Fadhel Abbas Hussein, a member of Tyba Mosque in Baghdad, watched as armed men attacked the mosque several times recently. "We did not discuss Sunni or Shiite inside this mosque," said the sheik, Abdel Rahman Mahmoud, 74, whose courtyard was strewn with crushed blue glass and charred scraps of paper from the fire that sectarian rioters set last week. "People thought of us as neutral." Here in the mixed neighborhood of Zayuna, Sunnis, Shiites and Christians live side by side, and residents always felt immune to sectarian violence. So when it exploded last Thursday, so did many dearly held beliefs. "I used to keep in my mind that Iraq will come back one day," said Shirouq Abayachi, a Zayuna resident who was pondering her country's fate with friends in a social club in central Baghdad on Tuesday. "Now the Iraq I wish to have cannot come back. There is no core left to rebuild." Beyond the small changes in city blocks - where a Shiite man took down a holiday flag, and Sunni clerics held machine guns as they peered though gates - is a larger shift in thinking. It was not the rate of the violence, to which Iraqis have grown bitterly accustomed, but its texture. Iraqis struck other Iraqis on the basis of their sect, in a rampage that few here could have imagined at the time of the American invasion three years ago. Iraqis in Zayuna wanted desperately for it not to be true; the phrase "Iraqis are brothers" was on everyone's lips. Once they had glimpsed the underside, many turned away, not wanting to see, but some, like Ms. Abayachi, seemed transfixed. "Maybe I see the end more clearly now," she said over a lunch of salads and a cocktail. "The end of Iraq." The descent into violence in Zayuna, an affluent area of manicured hedges and stores that sell Swatches in central Baghdad, did not pit neighbors against neighbors. Armed gangs, it seemed, were mostly from other areas. But the neighborhood was transformed anyway; its Sunni Arab residents have been left deeply afraid, and some of its Shiite residents ashamed. One of the neighborhood's worst attacks was on Sheik Mahmoud's mosque, Al Kazaz, which is Sunni but has attracted many Shiite worshipers. On Thursday shortly after 3 p.m., armed men poured gasoline onto the walls of a ceremonial hall inside its outer gate, and set the building on fire. Then they marched three worshipers, Kadham Chalub al-Jubouri, Mahmud Jawad al-Korui and Suaad Baha al-Biati, out to their cars. Mr. Jubouri, 73, resisted, and fell to the ground, but was eventually stuffed into a car, said Faak Abbas, a Shiite who saw the panicked procession from his cellphone shop across the street. Their bodies later surfaced in the city morgue. "We watched them, but we could do nothing," said Mr. Abbas, whose partner is a Sunni. "I tried to get close enough to talk to them, but we felt they were ready to kill anyone." "You could see the men here crying," he said, looking out the window of his small shop on Tuesday. No one really knew who the men were or what they wanted. Some residents said the men had come looking for people by name. Ms. Abayachi said they had driven down her street on Friday in six white Land Cruisers looking for a resident of house No. 20, but when they could not find him, had settled for roughing up a man in the house next door. Fadhel Abbas Hussein, standing in the courtyard of the Tyba Mosque in another part of Zayuna, said men who attacked his mosque shouted that they were from the Mahdi Army, a band of poor Shiites loyal to the rebel, anti-American cleric, Moktada al-Sadr. "They claimed there was someone they wanted to take from the inside of the mosque," said Mr. Hussein, rubbing orange prayer beads, with an AK-47 assault rifle slung over his shoulder. A younger worshiper, Muhammad Majid, said he doubted the men were actually from the Mahdi Army precisely because they had shouted it out loud to the entire neighborhood. Besides, he said, many of the roving gangs that day were impersonating Mahdi fighters, in the typical black dress, as a cover. In another incident, a mosque nearby that was protected by Mahdi fighter checkpoints was nearly overrun by other fighters who also claimed to be from the Mahdi Army. A lengthy argument ensued, he said. One of the biggest surprises for Sunnis was that Shiites, who have long followed the orders of their religious leaders, seemed suddenly to be ignoring them. What resulted was a descent into violence so quick that many were left unprepared, and mosques in Zayuna this week were making sure that would never happen again. Men stood in the courtyard of the Janabi Mosque on Monday afternoon, some fixing electrical wiring, others guarding entryways. The mosque tripled its guard force since last week, workers said. "Iraq had many explosions in mosques and churches," said a man in a work suit who gave only his nickname, Abu Nofal. "We just didn't expect something would happen that fast." The residents of Zayuna felt that no one had protected them, not least the Americans, who they said were nowhere to be found during the attacks. (American officials dispute that, and say patrols were sharply increased during the week.) In truth, it was difficult to pin anything down. A curfew was in place for three days, and people spent most of their time cooped up at home, talking on their cellphones. Panicked assumptions, about the size and scale of the killings, quickly took flight. In times of crisis in Iraq, "the truth is always lost and floating around," said Kadham al-Moqtadi, a professor at Baghdad University's media department. "Iraqi society is a society of rumors. If a rumor comes, reality disappears inside it." Iraq's political slant came to bear as well, he said, with television stations, many of which are affiliated with Shiite or Sunni parties, offering their own colored versions of events. The Furat channel, owned a religious Shiite party, stated that Sunni Arabs in the western province of Anbar supported Islamic extremists. "They made use of this point at a critical moment," Mr. Moqtadi said, adding that by Friday, the channels had toned down their coverage. Zayuna residents drifted back to work this week with a new wariness. Sunni and Shiite colleagues condemned the violence in one voice, but seemed to hold different views on what it meant. Tahsin al-Shekhli, a computer science professor and a Sunni, spent Tuesday morning at Baghdad University, where he spoke with some Shiite friends. "They said it was a tragedy, a horrible thing," he said. "But the ones who were talking frankly said something had to be done in terms of revenge. It was a feeling inside them." The violence accelerated an unraveling that began months ago. Sectarian migration, at least in some areas, surged. Shiite families from volatile areas north and west of Baghdad fled their homes after Sunni Arab threats. The families numbered about 10, though Shiite political leaders put the total at around 60. Rasoul Shahar, a man in his 20's, and his 11-member family left Tarmiya, north of Baghdad, on foot on Saturday, after Sunni threats. "They said, 'You started this first,' " Mr. Shahar said Tuesday, in a room in the youth center with several other families. "You destroyed our mosques, so you have to leave this district." As the afternoon wore on at the social club, guests began to leave, but Ms. Abayachi was still thinking. "Iraq is changing quickly, hour by hour," she said. "But what is coming after the end of Iraq? I don't know what it will be." a.. Omar al-Neami, Mona Mahmoud and Qais Mizher contributed reporting for this article. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe : [EMAIL PROTECTED] List owner : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
