Among the Believers

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This was a battle in which perceptions mattered, and both sides maintained they weren't threatening this holiest of Shi'ite sites. That said, the Mahdi fighters were clearly using the compound as their base, racing out to launch hit-and-run raids against the withering firepower of the combined U.S. and Iraqi forces. They established forward operating bases that they held until overpowered and then fell back with their wounded into the alleys of the Old City, where the huge tanks of the Americans could not go. There were no weapons to be seen inside the shrine compound. In their minds, the Mahdi fighters were technically not militarizing the shrine because they stashed their weapons in nearby buildings. We watched as mortar teams fired on U.S. tanks and fighting vehicles from just below the shrine's outer walls and then rushed into the compound, leaving the mortar outside.

The fighters came and went with the rhythm of battle; when one group came in with wounded, another would ready itself to go out. The Mahdi fighters said their power came not from gunpowder and cordite but from Allah. "Our mortars are destroying things that the American mortars are not," boasted Ali Hussein, 41, as he rested in the shrine. "We are shooting down helicopters and destroying tanks. This is a heavenly power." Hussein said he would support al-Sadr to the death. "We found in him a leader we are looking for," said Hussein. "He is defending the rights of the poor people." Over and over, the Mahdi fighters expressed their unyielding adherence to three precepts: American occupiers must leave Najaf and the rest of Iraq, Allawi and his caretaker government are puppets of the U.S. and must go, and above all, the militiamen must protect the shrine and al-Sadr with their lives.

The day before Sistani's reappearance, U.S. and Iraqi troops pushed closer to the shrine with punishing air strikes just meters from the outer walls. Crouched in a nearby doorway, Alaa Mahdi, 21, clutched his Kalashnikov and said, "I am here with my brothers in religion to defend our holy places, to show the West how tied we are to these shrines. They are more important than our souls and lives."

Thursday dawned hot and tense and quickly turned into the bloodiest day of the siege. As Sistani's motorcade sped toward the city, jittery Najaf police opened fire on protesters that the Grand Ayatullah had called out to march to the shrine. As other marchers gathered at the main mosque in nearby Kufa to support his peace mission, a mortar exploded in their midst, killing 27. In all, 110 people died and 501 were wounded in Thursday's violence, before Sistani's arrival gave all sides the opportunity to declare a cease-fire.

By late afternoon, as the two clerics met, men and boys wandered freely down the street where we had been targeted by snipers. The shrine was open, and thousands fighters and civilians milled about inside or sat in front of the main door. "Our marja [the term of reverence for Sistani] called for us to put an end to the troubles in this holy city," said one of his supporters, a civil engineer who gave his name as Muhammed. But the mood among the Mahdi militiamen was just as jubilant. They saw the peace accord as a signal victory: they had survived three weeks of the American onslaught, they were still alive, and they would walk out of the war zone free men. This battle was over but not their war. "We will support Muqtada al-Sadr," said Ali Hussein, the fighter we met two days before, "because his goal is for the occupiers to get out."