Terror At A Shrine

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It is from the youth of the slums that al-Sadr is recruiting his private army, the Jaish-e-Mahdi, named after a historical Shi'ite leader who disappeared in the 9th century and will, the devout believe, return one day to restore justice to the world. Although he has said his soldiers will be "armed with faith" only, al-Sadr supporters say he is recruiting special regiments made up entirely of former military men, who are being issued weapons and ammunition. Al-Sadr sacked his chief representative in Sadr City, insiders say, because the man was thought to be too religious and therefore too soft. His replacement, Kais Haadi al-Kazali, has stepped up the recruitment drive for al-Sadr's army.

The coalition paid al-Sadr scant attention until two weeks ago, when an American helicopter tried to knock down a Shi'ite banner from a telecommunications tower in Sadr City. Al-Sadr was able to mobilize tens of thousands of Shi'ites in Baghdad's largest street protest since the end of the war. Even so, a Pentagon official in Iraq says, the CPA has not yet got the full measure of al-Sadr. With his vision of Islamic rule in Iraq, his deep hatred of Americans and his rapidly growing army, al-Sadr is, according to this official, "the most dangerous man in Iraq."

People in Najaf and other Shi'ite towns in southern Iraq think they know exactly what al-Sadr is capable of. In the days after Saddam's fall, his bodyguards were accused of knifing to death at the gates of the mosque where al-Hakim was killed the moderate cleric Abdul-Majid al-Khoei, who had just returned from exile in London. (At the time, al-Sadr told TIME that the bodyguards involved had been dismissed before the assassination and that he had nothing to do with the killing of al-Khoei.) In April, al-Sadr's supporters surrounded the home of Grand Ayatullah Ali Sistani, supreme religious leader of Iraqi Shi'ites, and demanded that he leave the country. Sistani was saved by American troops.

Some SCIRI supporters suspect that al-Sadr was behind an attempt on Aug. 24 to assassinate al-Hakim's uncle Mohammed Said al-Hakim. A bomb exploded outside al-Hakim's home, injuring him and killing three. Al-Sadr has denied any involvement in that attack. Moments before last week's blast, al-Sadr was across town at the grand mosque of Kufa, delivering a sermon in which he condemned the attack on the older Hakim. "It was the act of criminals and should be punished," al-Sadr said.

In Washington, officials acknowledged the intensity of the struggle for supremacy among the Shi'ites. But they thought it "inconceivable," as one put it, that any Shi'ite could bomb his religion's holiest site. "It would be like a Catholic blowing up the Vatican," said the official. That may be so, but the miserable truth for the U.S. is that it almost doesn't matter whether the bombing was the work of someone within the Shi'ite community or Baathists. Either way, it foreshadows violence among Iraq's various groups. For an occupying force as the old imperial powers learned the hard way keeping public order in such circumstances is the hardest of all tasks. Sooner or later, everyone hates the outsider. The occupation of Iraq has been a mess for months. It just got a whole lot messier.