I was right. They’re going to be a doozy.
Last night thousands of Ayatollah Sistani’s followers tried to reach Najaf after the cleric’s call for them to march on the city’s Imam Ali shrine. Najaf’s chief of police gave orders to block all roads leading to the city and instructed officers to shoot demonstrators if they failed to turn back. At least two people were killed yesterday when police in Kufa opened fire on demonstrators.
I can’t help thinking that someone in the Bush* administration wanted to wrap up this little al Sadr problem before the Republican convention begins. It looks as though Sistani is about to demonstrate, however reluctantly, that there is no authority in Iraq, whether it’s our military or the puppet government, that can compete with him. Will that play well at the convention? I can see it being spun as Iraqis standing up to solve an Iraqi problem, but it’s hard to rinse the impotence of the American and Iraqi governments from that picture.
Anyway, it’ll be interesting. And it’s interesting already that Sistani seems to be coordinating with the Brits rather than with the US.
Sistani left the southern city of Basra in a huge convoy of some 50 police cars and 10 British military vehicles on Thursday morning, witnesses said. Hundreds of cars driven by his supporters joined the trip, which will take several hours.He will unveil a plan in Najaf to get the Mehdi militia out of the Imam Ali mosque and call on U.S. marines encircling Iraq’s holiest Shi’ite shrine to leave the city, his aides said.
The reclusive 73-year-old Sistani has also called for his supporters to march on Najaf to help end fighting between the rebels and U.S. forces that has crept closer to the shrine.
So he bypassed Baghdad and came home through Kuwait into the Shiite south and is getting a British military escort to Najaf, where he hopes to expel US troops from the city. This is great for Iraqis, and I hope really bad for the administration.
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*if that’s his real name
