Terror At A Shrine

(2 of 3)

As another body was clawed from the rubble, the cursing gave way to the sober recitation of the Islamic creed, a customary courtesy for the dead: "There is no God but Allah." As the body count climbed, the words were repeated again and again. An hour after the blast, the search had assumed a semblance of order, and the volunteer rescue workers, their fingers bleeding from their barehanded digging, chanted the creed almost continuously. For a moment, all thoughts of al-Qaeda and Saddam were banished. Then came word that a group of "Wahhabis" had been spotted in a hotel half a mile down the road. A small contingent of U.S. soldiers made an appearance but stayed a few blocks away. Shouting angrily, some men peeled away from the crowd and sprinted toward the hote. By the time they got there, two men in Afghan-style clothing had been cornered by a small mob and were being slapped and shoved around.

An old cleric suggested they be taken to the Americans. The mob was disappointed at being denied a lynching, but in Najaf, nobody disobeys a cleric. At first the soldiers refused to accept the prisoners. As the cleric negotiated with the Americans, the mob began to think again about the "Wahhabis." One man pulled out a pocketknife and headed for the two men, who claimed to have come from Basra to visit the grave of a relative. "Kill the Wahhabis!" the crowd shouted. "Slit their throats!" Finally, the Americans took charge. A group of soldiers quickly bundled the two men into a humvee and sped off. (On Saturday, U.S. military sources said the two men were still in custody, together with a third man who had been arrested by the local police.) The crowd started advancing menacingly toward the remaining Americans until the cleric shouted, "Don't waste your energy here! Go and give blood at the hospital. They will need a lot of blood today." Again his word brooked no argument, and the crowd melted away.

Back at the bomb site, rumors about al-Hakim continued to swirl. It was not until 5 p.m. that his death was confirmed, and by then about 80 bodies had been counted. With more than 150 injured, the main hospital in Najaf was straining to cope with the load. "This is a catastrophe for Iraqis," said Hassan al-Naji al-Moussawi, imam of the Mohsen Mosque in Sadr City, Baghdad's Shi'ite-dominated suburb, once known as Saddam City. "And for it to happen at the walls of the Imam Ali shrine, it's as if somebody has reached into the body of Iraq and cut off an organ."

On the Iraqi street, al-Qaeda remained the principal suspect, just as it was in the case of the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad two weeks ago. Iraqis clung to the belief that no homegrown militant group would deliberately kill so many Iraqis. "Only foreigners like the Wahhabis would kill Shi'as without hesitation," said Ali al-Rubieh, a pilgrim visiting Najaf from Basra. "They don't regard us as Muslims, anyway." The White House and Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, described the bombing as an act of terrorism, which has become shorthand for al-Qaeda. And in Najaf, reports circulated that the local police had arrested up to 19 men with alleged al-Qaeda connections, though in the chaos it was impossible to say whether that haul included the two men whom TIME had seen saved from the mob by U.S. forces. Privately, some U.S. government officials in Washington said they believed, after a preliminary assessment, that secular Baathists loyal to Saddam were responsible. Hamid al-Bayati, SCIRI's spokesman in London, and Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Conference saw the handiwork of Saddam's supporters.

But in Iraq many were beginning to suspect that the bombing may have been part of a power struggle within the Shi'ite leadership. Although they are the majority in Iraq, Shi'ites were repressed under Saddam's rule. Whoever establishes himself as a leader of the Shi'ites now will have substantial power in any future political arrangements. As the founder of SCIRI, al-Hakim represented the relatively moderate, pragmatic faction of the Shi'ite community. Although he had long espoused anti-American sentiments, al-Hakim had been prepared to cooperate with the CPA. His brother Abdel Aziz al-Hakim is SCIRI's representative in the U.S.-appointed Governing Council for Iraq, and in Bakir's final Friday address, he condemned the daily attacks on American troops.

That very moderation, however, made him suspect in the eyes of the larger, more radical Shi'ite organization, the Sadr Group, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, 29. Cooperation with the coalition is anathema to al-Sadr, whose power base lies among the poorest Shi'ite communities, especially in Sadr City. Descended from a line of venerated ayatullahs, two of whom were executed by Saddam's regime, al-Sadr has the one thing the Hakim brothers lacked: street cred. He speaks in the rough argot of the slums, and his sermons, usually given after Friday prayers, are delivered in a take-no-prisoners style that appeals to young Shi'ites.