The attacks on worshipers in Karbala and Baghdad yesterday, like that in Quetta in Pakistan, were vile beyond imagination. These were acts of utter inhumanity and those who did them will have to answer if not in this world, then most certainly in the next for their unparalleled wickedness. There can be nothing more evil than slaughtering people while they are at prayer.
Of course revulsion and fury at this latest mass murder are precisely what the killers wanted. It is the nature of terrorism that it seeks above all to destabilize. The terrorists yesterday hoped that from the relatives, friends and co-religionists of the more than 100 dead and the many scores of hideously maimed and wounded would come a howl for revenge. The terrorists’ victory would be measured by the extent to which Iraqi would be turned upon Iraqi in sectarian conflict. In the hours after the slaughter, there was indeed in Karbala a frantic search for someone to blame. Fueled by rumor, there were incidents when people who appeared to be strangers were set upon by incensed crowds. Some foreign journalists photographing the carnage were beaten up. Yet amid all the confusion, Shiite religious leaders, though shaken by the atrocities, issued a call for calm. That is the only encouraging ray of light in this otherwise black situation.
As such it may be the first victory for the new interim constitution which had been finally agreed only 24 hours earlier. Though the definitive document awaits a properly elected parliament, the constitution as it stands represents everything that the terrorists do not want. It is the product of wisdom and moderation based on compromise. None of the parties to the deal has gained all that it wanted, but they have all won for Iraq a foundation on which a stable and secure pluralist future can be built.
The June handover of power to the interim government draws closer. The elections are to come not much later. With every passing day the cause of peace advances and the ambitions of the terrorists are pushed back. This killing and mutilation of so many innocents are evidence of their mounting desperation. They know that they have no part in this new Iraq. They have nothing to offer save misery and bloodshed.
Iraqis must hold firm. The beasts that perpetrate these vile crimes will and must be hunted down. It is now increasingly clear that they are a tiny remnant of the old Baathists in an unholy alliance with Al-Qaeda-like extremists who pervert everything that Islam stands for in a mindless orgy of destruction. For Iraqi to strike out now against Iraqi would carry the devastating blasts from Karbala and Baghdad into every Iraqi home and injure all decent citizens, who are the overwhelming majority in Iraq. The terrorists must not be given this victory.
