Nir Rosen - Aftermath

The walls of the Maluki Mosque were covered in pro-Saddam graffiti that had been unsuccessfully crossed out. Neighborhood boys surrounded it at prayer time, wielding Kalashnikovs unconvincingly. As the men strolled in for the Friday prayer, they were searched for concealed weapons. Slowly several hundred of the neighborhood men entered, greeting one another and gossiping in the courtyard and then removing their shoes and entering. As the muezzin finished his call to prayer, Sheikh Hussein carefully stepped between the closely seated worshipers, making his way to the podium and climbing up the steps. He began with blessings and reminded the people who their God and Prophet was, his voice low, slow, and gentle, his arms still; then he picked up the pace, arms waving faster, voice getting higher as he got more excited, until his voice cracked and he was nearly crying, chopping the air in a frenzy; and then he placed both hands out in supplication, his voice exasperated, slowing down as he answered his own questions, only to begin the cycle again, from low raspy rumble to the screaming crescendo that woke up those whose heads had sunk lower and lower into their chest in drowsiness.

Sheikh Hussein began by discussing Ali, whom Sunnis consider the fourth caliph, who succeeded the Prophet Muhammad in leadership of the umma (Muslim nation). Ali is also revered by Shiites as the only caliph who should have followed Muhammad, since he was the Prophet’s relative. “Ali was the first feday [fighter willing to sacrifice his life] in Islam,” Sheikh Hussein lectured. “He taught the nation how to sacrifice oneself. Be like Ali and sacrifice yourself for Islam. Be like Hassan, who tried to unify the people and who compromised with Muawiya for the sake of unity so the Muslim world would not be weak like our situation now.” This was interesting. Hassan was the son of Ali, who expected to succeed his father as caliph but was turned down for Muawiya, a man from a family that rivaled the Prophet’s Hashem tribe. At first Hassan disputed Muawiya’s claim to leadership, but he ultimately compromised. Shiekh Hussein’s reference to this episode could only be directed at Iraq’s Shiites, the descendants of those who had wanted Muhammad’s family, starting with Ali, to lead Muslims. He was asking them to compromise and let Muawiya’s descendants, the Sunnis, maintain power.

“Muhammad prophesied when Hassan was a child,” Sheikh Hussein explained, “that ‘my grandson will one day reconcile between two sects of Islam.’ Be like Hassan so we will be strong.” It seemed Sheikh Hussein might avoid mentioning Hassan’s more recalcitrant brother, Hussein, who chose to dispute the claim of Muawiya’s family after Muawiya and Hassan both died and Yazid, Muawiya’s son, was appointed caliph. “We condemn the attacks in Karbala and Baghdad,” he declared. “The first goal of the enemies of Islam is to make this country weak. They have a plan to make this country weak by causing a sectarian war so people will be busy fighting each other and they can control it, and our enemy the occupier will remain seated on our chests. So we condemn these attacks that are designed to provoke a sectarian war in this country.” Sheikh Hussein also condemned an earlier attack in Baghdad that had killed a young Shiite cleric. Then he continued, with a surprise, “We have to unify and be like Hussein, the martyr of Karbala, because he sacrificed himself for this country where many warriors were born. Hussein came to Iraq to fight a tyrant because he said, ‘I will not allow a tyrant to rule,’ and he did not want oppression. So he came to teach the people that any Muslim should sacrifice himself to prevent the creation of tyranny, and Hussein defined the path of martyrdom for the people who followed him and told them to follow it.” This is something you rarely hear from a Sunni. The divide between Hussein and Yazid split the Muslim world into Sunnis and Shiites and led to centuries of fitna between the two communities, with Shiites revering Hussein and hating Yazid and Muawiya, and Sunnis defending them and disparaging Hussein and his followers. “We are sorry, Hussein,” the sheikh cried out. “We are ashamed to meet you in the next life, because Baghdad has fallen.” By the end of the sermon, Sheikh Hussein had lost his voice and was too exhausted to talk to me.

After prayer was over Sheikh Hussein shook hands with many of his flock, and they embraced and kissed in the way Sunnis of western Iraq do. (Sheikh Hussein is from the Dulaimi tribe, whose stronghold is the western Anbar province.) He then retreated to his house inside the mosque, where he feasted with his guests from the nearby town of Abu Ghraib as his horde of little boys sat in the corners. American helicopters flew low overhead, shaking the room while Sheikh Hussein and his guests discussed the latest killings of sheikhs and attacks on mosques, and grumbled about the Americans.

In late 2003 at least four people were killed and seven injured when a drive-by shooting targeted the Hassanein Mosque in Amriya after the evening prayers. Sheikh Adnan, the cleric, explained that Shiite militiamen had attacked former regime intelligence men who were praying there. Some locals complained that Sunnis were complacent while attacks were perpetrated against them with impunity. Sheikh Adnan warned that this would lead to worse trouble for Shiites and Sunnis. He also complained that when Sunni clerics went to pay their condolences after the killing of Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim of the Supreme Council, they were called “Jewish Wahhabis.”

THE MOOD WAS COARSENING in Amriya. Wall advertisements that featured photos of women were painted black to remove the female faces. Amriya is a wealthy neighborhood too; it has many English-speaking citizens, some of whom worked as translators with the American military. Many of them were killed; many others had to flee Amriya for safer neighborhoods. In the months leading up to the first election for a provisional national assembly in January 2005, Amriya’s streets were full of leaflets and walls calling for “death for those who disappoint what they had promised God,” meaning death for those participating in the election. Some insurgent groups patrolled the streets at night and launched their mortars toward the airport. Hundreds of Shiite families were brutally cleansed from the area; they would find sanctuary in areas under the control of the Sadrists.

Jafar was a Shiite originally from the predominantly Shiite town of Nasiriya in southeast Iraq. His family moved to Baghdad in 1940 but maintained connections with their tribe in the south. Jafar lived in Amriya in a big house with his seventy-year-old mother, two of his brothers, and their wives. Each brother had three or four children. The family was known in Amriya for practicing the Shiite tradition of cooking food and giving it away to poor people on Ashura; they did this even under the former regime, when it was permitted in the last two years of Baath rule.

Mueisar, Jafar’s third brother, was a soldier in the Iraqi army and was captured at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War in 1982. He had been a soldier with the Badr Brigade—who were stationed in Iran as an armed exile group—but he was too physically weak to be a soldier, so he left it in 2001. Mueisar returned home to Amriya after the U.S. invasion, accompanied by his Iranian wife and three children. He was the only member of his Iranian family who spoke Arabic. When he returned to Amriya Mueisar registered his children in the local school so that they could learn Arabic and mix with other Arab children.

A few days after the second battle of Falluja started in late 2004, a new family belonging to the biggest Sunni tribe, the Dulaimi, moved to Amriya to live with their relatives, the Abu Khalel family, who were Jafar’s neighbors. Just like many displaced families who fled Falluja, they were too poor to rent a house, so they were hosted by relatives. Because Amriya’s houses are often large enough to host large families, many displaced decided to go there. A few days later some Shiite families received threats demanding that they leave their houses. After one Shiite family vacated their house, which stood next to the one Abu Khalel owned, his relatives took it over.