Shiite cleric’s decree accelerates fracturing of Iraq

ISTANBUL – The fracturing of Iraq into feuding ethnic and sectarian bastions accelerated Friday as Iraq’s senior Shiite Muslim cleric broke years of support for the central government and decreed that every able-bodied Shiite man had a religious obligation to defend the sect’s holy sites from rebellious Sunni Muslims led by fighters from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

In answer to the call, thousands of Shiites – many with militia experience from the sectarian war that pitted Sunnis against Shiites and killed thousands from 2006 to 2008 – flooded the cities of Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala to receive weapons, enlist in organized units and receive their orders.

Hours later, President Barack Obama made it clear that the United States was unwilling to commit itself to the defense of a government that had been unable to resolve Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian differences.

“We’re not going to allow ourselves to be dragged back into a situation in which, while we’re there, we’re keeping a lid on things, and after enormous sacrifices by us, as soon as we’re not there, suddenly people end up acting in ways that are not conducive to the long-term stability and prosperity of the country,” Obama said.

With Sunni Islamists in control of much of the north and west, Kurds expanding their control of the long-contested Kirkuk region and Shiites gathering for sectarian war, the likelihood of any accommodation seemed remote.

Emma Sky, a fellow at Yale University who advised U.S. forces in Iraq until 2010, called the events “the slow death” of the Iraqi state in an interview with McClatchy.

Perhaps most telling was Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s religious endorsement of Shiite men taking up arms to defend “their homes, their cities and their holy places” from the Sunnis. Previously, al-Sistani had rejected militia activities and urged support for the central government, even during the darkest days of the 2006-08 sectarian war.

A Shiite resident of Baghdad, who asked to be called Abu Zeinab, said his neighborhood near the Shiite Shrine of Khadam in the neighborhood of Khadamiya was filled with volunteers after al-Sistani’s decree became known.

“The statement by the marja, Sistani,” he said, using an Arabic term of respect that loosely means “object of emulation,” “has changed everything now. It says we should fight as Shiites to protect Shiites. I think this means there is no Iraqi state now.”

Iraqi state television showed dozens of vehicles filled with hundreds of men in Baghdad singing martial Shiite songs commemorating the battle of Karbala in A.D. 680, when the Sunni caliphate destroyed a Shiite uprising – an event that has played heavily in the rhetoric of both sides; in recent days, Islamic State of Iraq members have threatened to repeat that massacre.

“People are scared of the Wahhabi invaders,” Abu Zeinab said, using a term common in Iraq to describe ISIS ideology that allows killing Muslims deemed insufficiently pious, particularly Shiites. “All the boys from the neighborhood who were in militias during the American occupation have returned, and hundreds of youth from the (Shiite-dominated south) have come to fight. The government and the militias are handing out arms. I think there’re Iranians here as well; there’re always Iranians here at the shrine.”

Other Baghdad residents reached by phone said a near-panic had set in among much of the population as rumors were spreading about an impending jihadist invasion of the city. Rumors were rife that the government planned to block popular text-messaging and social media services in the city to try to contain the hysteria. There was no official announcement from the government, however.

Meanwhile, ISIS and its Sunni allies continued capturing ground in areas disputed between Sunni and Shiite religious factions while the Iraqi army appeared irrelevant to the conflict.

Iranian and Iraqi news organizations were filled with reports that the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ al-Quds Force, the cross between an intelligence agency and special forces that’s often deployed to pursue Iranian foreign and security policy, had arrived in Baghdad to direct the fight against ISIS after four days that saw the army crumble.

Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani was, according to numerous credible reports, said to be directing the defenses of Baghdad personally. Suleimani, a well-known figure in Middle East security circles, is said to control Iranian operations in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Supporters of Iran often credit him with devising the strategy that has salvaged the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad.

On Friday, CNN reported that a senior Iraqi official had said that as many as 500 troops from the al-Quds Force had begun arriving to help protect Baghdad. CNN said the official had said the Iranians would be deployed to Diyala province, a mixed Sunni and Shiite area, where their presence would generate less anger than in the mostly Sunni areas now under ISIS control.

The mustering of the Shiite community was to be expected: ISIS had issued a manifesto Thursday in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, which it had captured Tuesday, calling for the destruction of all Shiite shrines.

Abu Zeinab said daily life was tense in Baghdad as people stocked supplies and in many cases gathered weapons to prepare for a siege as ISIS and Sunni forces were rumored to be within 20 miles or so of the capital.

“Iraqis have only known war and shortages for 30 years,” he said. “We know what to do.”