NAJAF, Iraq, 18 August 2004 — When Saddam Hussein ruled Najaf with an iron fist, Samir Ghalib stayed home during troubled times. Now snipers, mortars and tanks are keeping him and many others home as radical Shiite militants battle nervous US soldiers along dusty alleyways surrounding their houses.
A body lies in the street, covered in a dirty blanket, but it would be too risky to remove it and Ghalib knows it. “A sniper killed him yesterday at two o’clock. He was crossing the street. I don’t think he was a militant fighter, just an ordinary Iraqi,” Ghalib, 24, an unemployed vegetable trader, told Reuters.
He wears a flak jacket a journalist gave him that looks odd over his traditional Iraqi flowing robe. The old city of Najaf has turned into a no man’s land ahead of an expected US-led offensive on militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr.
Ghalib and many others living in densely populated streets with cement houses and old wooden doors have become acutely sensitive to the sound of explosions and spend much of their day studying the movement of snipers.
“There is an American tank down that street and troops who shoot at anything that moves, like that man laying dead,” said his neighbor, Hani Hassan, 40, a father of two. “Fifteen mortars landed on our street yesterday. Everyone is terrified. I sent my wife and two daughters to my mother’s house far from here. I can’t call them,” he said, his eyes moist with tears.
Residents of the neighborhood say they don’t really care who is winning an urban war of attrition that has shattered truces and left them wondering whether this holy city can be spared further destruction and bloodshed. “We tried to go see our families but we could not make it past roads held by the Americans and the militants who fire at everyone,” said Hassan.
The men complained that in some ways Iraq has not changed for the Shiite majority since the fall of Saddam. “Najaf is Shiite. In Saddam’s time, his Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Army and Baathists used to hurt the people, pressure us. Now the Mehdi Army and the Americans have turned it into a war zone,” Hassan said.
He paused for a moment to show a reporter his neighbor’s knee which was half blown off when Saddam forced him and hundreds of thousands of others to fight Iran in the 1980s. But nobody dwelled on the suffering of the past because an American warplane screamed overhead and the crackle of gunfire left people wondering where the bullets were coming from.
The siege may not end anytime soon. Sadr’s militiamen who fire rocket-propelled grenades in every direction are also entrenched in the Imam Ali shrine. Storming one of Shiites’ holiest shrines would not be a wise option for American troops and Iraqi government forces who want to contain passions, not inflame them.
After spending hours in the dark with no electricity and water, residents of the old city have few diversions except for picking up huge pieces of deadly shrapnel. “We just sit around waiting to hear the sound of the next explosion,” said Ghalib as two minibuses slowly navigated his street, slowing down to check if American tanks or snipers from the other side were positioned around the corner.
As a mortar bomb shook the area, Hassan looks around: “We are used to this. It happens every day. The streets around us are targeted by snipers. We have nothing to do but wait.”
As for Ali Ghanim, a resident in the same street, he remembers dreams long past. “When Saddam fell I used to have so many dreams of Najaf, holy Najaf. Of many tourists and pilgrims flocking here,” he said, looking at the deserted streets.
