BATTERED by a three-week siege, last night’s agreement between Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr offered a glimpse of hope to Najaf’s war-weary residents.
After a day of violence, Ayatollah al-Sistani’s spokesman appealed to both pilgrims and police to keep calm. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, welcomed the breakthrough and urged all parties to respect the sanctity of the Imam Ali Mosque.
There was scepticism, however, over whether all parties, including the Government, would abide by the agreement. Significantly, Ayatollah al-Sistani’s spokesman refused to discuss details of the five conditions laid down in the peace plan.
These would see the Mahdi Army leaving the Imam Ali shrine and disarming, US forces moving out of Najaf, security turned over to Iraqi police and compensation paid by the interim Government to those who suffered in the fighting.
Some also fear that the request for the thousands of pro-Sistani marchers to visit the shrine and then leave will give an easy opportunity for Mahdi Army fighters to melt away unnoticed.
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Ayatollah al-Sistani’s bold peace mission to the Shias’ holy city began inauspiciously, with a mortar attack on the main mosque in the twin city of Kufa, killing 25 al-Sadr followers. Soon afterwards at least 20 Shia marchers in Kufa were killed by gunfire.
Ayatollah al-Sistani had told his supporters to remain outside the city but, as the elderly cleric slept after his long journey from Basra, thousands of his supporters evaded stringent police efforts to keep them out.
The unanswered question of how the notoriously trigger-happy Iraqi police would deal with the vast juggernaut of Sistani supporters hung heavy in the air. Thousands of his gleeful followers continued a mile down the street.
As the cavalcade of vehicles, many adorned with Sistani pictures, crossed Medina street at 6.05pm, they were turned back by the police.
Then the answer was provided by a burst of gunfire. “The police are shooting. Why? We are not armed,” shouted Mohammed Ali. “They are simple people.”
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“We came to demonstrate peacefully. We were at the back with empty hands, we were only carrying prayer beads,” said Mohaned Hassan, as he limped out of hospital later.
But Salah Kareem, 21, a policeman injured in the same incident, said that some of the crowd were carrying pistols and hand grenades and “they opened fire on us”, an account confirmed by at least one of the wounded demonstrators.
In fact the quietest place in Najaf was the old city, where US forces suspended their assault on the Mahdi Army, which has been driven back almost to the Imam Ali shrine. There, marchers who sneaked past the police lines mingled freely with the few Mahdi gunmen left.
“This is democracy, this is the new Iraq, this is the greatest defeat we could have inflicted on the Americans. It is the most beautiful day in my life,” Akir Hassan, 63, shouted as he hurried inside the golden shrine to pray.
But the bloody aftermath of the day’s events became abundantly clear at Najaf hospital, whose gardens were filled with the injured and dying and doctors had to treat patients on the entry ramp of the main gate.
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“The Iraqi policeman who started shooting at us was very young, like a 13-year-old,” lamented Hussain Alwan Abbas, a 21-year-old who left the southern city of Samawa at 7am. “I was shot as I was running away.”
Inside the hospital bodies were stacked three to a stretcher, dripping blood on to the floor, and corpses piling up as ambulances arrived at the rate of one a minute.
Two dead policemen lay at the scene and medical staff wept at the scale of the casualties. One hospital worker said: “Go look at the morgue — it’s full.”
The bitterness of those in Najaf yesterday will take a long time to dispel and the bloodbath can only have tarnished Ayatollah’s al-Sistani’s mission of peace.
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PEACE DEAL