BAGHDAD, 3 September 2003 — Spiritual leaders of Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority yesterday accused some Shiites of launching an “ethnic cleansing” campaign in two holy cities. They also accused neighboring Shiite-dominated Iran of trying to fuel growing religious tensions in the war-torn country by reaching out to a powerful young cleric known for his virulent opposition to the US-led occupation.
The Shiites “have taken over the Al-Hamza mosque, our only one in Najaf, and the Hassan ibn Ali mosque, our only one in Karbala,” a spokesman for the Council of Ulema (religious scholars), Sheikh Abdel Salam Al-Kubeissi, told AFP.
“Emptying Najaf and Karbala of the Sunni presence is a grave phenomenon akin to ethnic cleansing and (conducive to) the Balkanization of Iraq,” he said. He also accused Shiites of taking control of 16 other Sunni mosques across the country, including a dozen in Baghdad. The claim could not immediately be verified.
His comments came as hundreds of thousands of Shiites thronged Najaf, a pilgrim city 180 km south of Baghdad, to bury Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Al-Hakim, a revered cleric whose death in a brutal car bombing outside a shrine there has thrown the country into turmoil. Emotions are running high and could lead to Shiites turning against Sunnis, who were the main supporters of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein. Iraq’s Shiites make up a majority of about 60 percent of the 25-million population. But Kubeissi said the Ulema Council had called for calm among its followers in the face of “provocations from some Shiites.”
“We are being quiet, not because we are cowards, but because in the current situation it is necessary that we remain calm.” But in a broadside at Iran, the Ulema Council also accused the supreme leader of the neighboring Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, of pressuring the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr to cut ties with the Sunnis. “We had a minimum of coordination with Moqtada Sadr but he changed about 40 days ago after a meeting with Khamenei in Iran,” Kubeissi said. “Iran has entered the Iraqi scene. It looks badly on meetings between Shiites and Sunnis, a fraternization between (Sunni) mosques and the Husseiniyeh,” or Shiite holy places, he said.
Sadr has risen to prominence in the power vacuum of post-Saddam Iraq, tapping the followers of his father, a revered grand ayatollah slain by Iraqi security agents in 1999.
Despite being the majority, Shiites were heavily persecuted by Saddam, partly because of their perceived sympathy for Iran during their brutal 1980-88 war which claimed up to a million lives on both sides.
