Newsweek - National News, World News, Health, Technology, Entertainment and more... | Newsweek.com

Checkpoint Baghdad

RSS
SPONSORED BY

Authors

Babak Dehghanpisheh

Larry Kaplow

Rod Nordland

Lennox Samuels

Silvia Spring

Categories




Links

Featured Postings

Iraq Bombings Threaten to Renew Chaos

5:41 PM, April 24, 2009 | Comments (13)
An Iraqi talk show anchor planned to spend his hour today talking about the recent robbery and shooting spree against jewelry store owners. But after the third bombing with massive casualties in two days, he changed the subject. Here’s a sample of the...

Some Iraqis Support Tough Shoe-Thrower Sentence

2:19 PM, March 12, 2009 | Comments (33)

Rebuilding Baghdad's Infamous Airport Road

8:04 PM, November 3, 2008 | Comments (1)

Archives

See All from February
Previous
February 2009
Next
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
       
       
Full Post
Posted Friday, February 13, 2009 4:48 PM

Iraq's Shiite Pilgrims Try Not to Yield to Violence

Newsweek
By Lennox Samuels

It seemed like a typical Friday in Baghdad during celebrations for Arbaeen, the ceremony that comes 40 days after the anniversary of the death of Imam Hussein. Hypnotic chants wafted over the city and men and women, some pushing strollers, walked along Karrada Inner Street and Mohammed al-Qasim Highway on their way to the holy city of Karbala. It was hard to tell that bombers had killed more than 60 Shia Muslims and injured dozens more in three consecutive days of mayhem.

And that is how the Shiite pilgrims wanted it. Yes, bombings in Baghdad killed at least 12 people Wednesday, followed by the death of eight more a day later in a suicide attack in Karbala itself and finally, the slaughter of at least 32, mostly women and children, by a female suicide bomber near Iskandiriyah on Friday. Iraqis walking stoically along the pilgrimage route and worshiping in Baghdad and Karbala mosques had decided they would not yield to terrorists trying to reignite violent sectarianism. The pilgrimage, once an act of defiance against Saddam Hussein, has become an act of defiance against terrorism. 

“These terrorist acts will increase our determination to do the pilgrimage. We will challenge terrorism,” Mohammed Ajaj Kazem, a 27-year-old farmer from Nasiriyah, tells NEWSWEEK. He walked five days from his hometown to Najaf, another holy city, en route to Karbala. Kazem is among the millions of Iraqis who went to the polls Jan. 31 to elect provincial councils. For him, the election represented a decisive shift toward a new Iraq and he will not to be distracted from seizing the future. Others say the same thing. Despite strong provocation, Iraqis may at last be finding the will to resist the call to violence.

Many are motivated by sheer war weariness and the desire for normality. In the Karrada and Mansour districts, men are starting to throng cafes again. Families browse electronics stores along Outer Karrada Street. Residents regard empty, abandoned hulks and ask openly when the structures will be rehabilitated or demolished. A middle-aged university professor who has not worked for months since his 7-year-old son was kidnapped says he just wants to have his son back and return to teaching. Some Iraqis who worked for Coalition forces or contractors and had been desperate to secure visas to America now say they want to stay and help rebuild.

Iraqis increasingly want to be left alone to fix their enervated society. And they’re not just talking about the Americans and their coalition partners. More of them are articulating a deep suspicion of and exasperation with their geographical neighbors, especially Iran and Syria. Some see the hand of Tehran in the pilgrimage bombings. “The terrorism is financed by neighboring governments unwilling to free their own people and become like Iraqis,” says Kamal Abbas, 32, a Najaf policeman making the trek. “Iran has incubators in Iraq and they feed the extremists of both sects [Shia and Sunni] to try to destroy Iraq.” His comment blithely presumes an imminently democratic Iraq. Kazem, the Nasiriyah farmer, does too. “Those bad people do not like democracy to spread from Iraq to their homelands, like Syria and Saudi Arabia,” he declares.

Along with such awareness comes a widening political savvy. Provincial election balloting, which saw Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s candidates grab the largest proportion of votes in nine out of 14 provinces, suggested that Iraqis no longer can be expected to vote along mostly religious lines. Some pilgrims confirmed that, along with a shrewd assessment of high-stakes politics.  “Some of the violence in Iraq comes from the political powers,” says Yasir Zaki, 28, a Baghdad contractor. “The parties that failed in the last elections started to cause violence in order to oblige the powers that did win to bring them into the government.”

Violence, some Iraqis say, could be reduced at least to a degree if the political chess game ended. The government would become a meritocracy, with no regard to allocating ministries on the basis of party affiliation. “Some parties try to create problems for other parties in order to take ministries from them," Jalal Ali Hassan, a 45-year-old Baghdad businessman, tells NEWSWEEK. “The solution is to let the prime minister choose figures for the ministers who are not from parties.” Such a system, of course, assumes the prime minister can be trusted to make merit-based decisions.

Further, Iraqis are increasingly vocal in demanding that the government expend its energy on their needs.  Some look at the success of the Kurdistan region of their country with a degree of envy and admiration, despite their antipathy toward the Kurds. And they understand that central and southern Iraq must be as uncompromising in the quest to properly exploit the nation’s lucrative oil industry and attract business and even tourism, while keeping people safe. 

They also prescribe a frontal assault on government corruption. Amin Ali, 44, works at Doura Refinery. He says oil revenues are not spent on building power stations or more refineries, but on unrelated, even irrelevant projects. “Ministries like Trade, Oil, Electricity, Industry, their performance is catastrophic,” he says. “They are spending their budgets on issues that do not develop the performance of the ministries themselves. He adds that, “Corruption is stronger than anything else in the country. I think it is as dangerous as the armed groups and the insurgency.”

With many Iraqis focused on the route to development, it is less likely that Iraq’s nascent self-confidence will be snuffed by deadly terrorism on the road to Karbala. Granted, the lethal attacks of the last three days showed that the nation’s improved security forces cannot prevent suicide attacks and bombings, even with hundreds of soldiers and police, aerial surveillance and numerous checkpoints. But those trying to scare off pilgrims are certain to fail. Karbala governor Akeel al-Khazali said more than 4 million are making the march. “Each time they create an incident, they are making more people want to go,” says Riyadh al-Ghoraifi, a 50-year-old Baghdad expert on family trees. And those seeking to use the pilgrimage attacks to incite renewed violence may find Iraqis are not so eager to turn on each other, again.

--With Hussam Ali and Saad Al-Izzi
Advertisement
You must be a registered user to comment.  Click here to register.  Already a user?  Click here to login.

Member Comments

Posted By: nawawimohamad (February 19, 2009 at 3:43 AM)

The US wants to be the master of the world. Whatever seemingly good changes in Iraq sre nothing compared to the destruction that the US have done. Iraq will remain poor and backward with its oil being siphoned by the US, So please do not try to paint a good picture on the war. The US have always believe that the entire world is a threat to its existence and have toppled and replaced elected governments with the ones that the US favours. The US have also installed so many military bases and businesses at strategic locations in the world BUT have never taken the internal threat seriously. The internal threat comes in various forms but the US government has played the issue down and eventually the people will be caught with their pants down at which stage, the government can do nothing about it.

Report Abuse
Posted By: cougar_gal06 (February 17, 2009 at 2:15 PM)

I think that we need to be careful about what is going on in Pakistan right now. The Borgen Project (www.borgenproject.org) has some interesting facts about global poverty and national security. "Poverty creates conditions of instability. Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and Somalia, the poorest countries on earth, are also the countries where terrorist groups have found safe havens. In regions where people are desperate and barely surviving, terrorist groups have easily won support by building schools and improving conditions. For the United States to win in regions where terrorists operate, the U.S. will have to do more to improve the plight of people living in those regions." Greater efforts are needed to make this nation a safer one.

Report Abuse
Posted By: Anonymous (February 13, 2009 at 8:50 PM)

Times Online Suicide bomber kills 32 in attack on Shiite pilgrims in IraqInternational Herald Tribune - 6 hours agoBy Marc Santora BAGHDAD: A female suicide bomber with explosives hidden under her garments blew herself up in a crowd of Shiite pilg

Report Abuse
Show All Comments (5) »