A daytime curfew in Baghdad and surrounding provinces appeared to check the pace of sectarian unrest on Friday as Iraq’s religious leaders used the Muslim day of prayer to stage symbolic joint services for Shi’ite and Sunni worshippers and call for national unity.
However, there were sporadic outbreaks of violence in the capital as well as in central and southern Iraq. United States and Iraqi security forces remained on high alert as the death count in the wake of Wednesday’s bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra passed 200.
The country’s most powerful Shi’ite politician, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said in a televised address that those who bombed the shrine ”do not represent the Sunnis in Iraq”.
He blamed former Saddam loyalists and extremist followers of the Jordanian-born militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. ”We all have to unite in order to eliminate them,” he said.
Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, acknowledged that this week’s violence has damaged efforts to form a government of national unity — a key element of Washington’s stated exit strategy. The anti-Sunni backlash following the Samarra attack triggered a walkout from coalition talks by the largest Sunni bloc.
”Yes, this makes it harder today and perhaps tomorrow,” said Rice. ”But I’m confident the Iraqis are devoted to, dedicated to, the formation of a national unity government, and I think they will get back to that process very shortly.”
Rice, returning from a Middle East tour, said the violence has also alarmed Arab countries who fear that the disintegration of Iraq along sectarian lines could spark wider unrest between Shi’ites and Sunnis. Arab League ambassadors in Cairo condemned the attack in Samarra.
The two feuding communities in Iraq appeared to pull back on Friday from the brink of civil war as the curfews and calls for calm from religious leaders took effect. ”It is tense, but some sense is beginning to prevail,” said a government minister.
Baghdad was relatively quiet. Police and army units sealed off districts, setting up roadblocks to halt cross-city traffic. Residents were allowed to walk to Friday prayers. At the Abu Hanifa mosque, the city’s most important Sunni site, Imam Ahmed Hasan al-Taha described the attack on the golden mosque in Samarra as ”a conspiracy to draw Iraqis into civil war”.
In Basra, more than 10 000 Sunnis and Shi’ites converged on al-Adillah mosque, where a representative of Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called for a halt to the divisions.
Other joint prayer services were held, including one at the bombed Askariya shrine. Security forces reportedly turned away several hundred Sunnis who showed up to express solidarity with their Shi’ite neighbours. In the Sadr city district of east Baghdad, radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers — blamed for many of this week’s reprisals — to refrain from harming fellow Muslims.
After prayers in the southern cities of Amara and Kut, supporters of the radical cleric staged protests demanding the removal of the US ambassador to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad. The envoy has been heavily criticised by Shi’ites for remarks this week in which he said Iraqi security must not be in the hands of sectarian parties or militias. Some Sunnis have accused Shi’ite groups in the interior ministry of running anti-Sunni death squads. Some Shi’ite leaders say Khalilzad’s intervention gave the green light to Sunni rebels to destroy the Samarra mosque.
The Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, vowed to step up security at Iraq’s holy shrines. Many Iraqis have accused his government, along with US forces, of failing to prevent Wednesday’s attack. — Guardian Unlimited Â