BLACKENED and putrefying, the two dozen corpses lay unburied in Najaf’s religious court yesterday, a legacy of the 22-day siege that ended with the deal struck between Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the rebel cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr.
At dawn yesterday thousands of supporters brought to Najaf by the ayatollah in a massive march for peace poured into the old city to take possession of the Imam Ali shrine, where al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi Army had defied US and Iraqi forces for so long.
The startled pilgrims fell silent as they surveyed the destruction. They found a front line akin to Sarajevo — buildings blasted to their foundations and the Street of the Messenger turned into Sniper Alley, littered with charred vehicles and shrapnel. Shops used by Madhi fighters as firing positions had been obliterated by tank shells.
Beneath the rubble stood armed al-Mahdi Army fighters, still at their posts, still with their AK47s and still awaiting their orders to stand down. These came soon enough, in an 8am message from Hojatoleslam al-Sadr broadcast from the golden minarets of the shrine.
“To my brothers in the Mahdi Army,” the disembodied voice declared. “I beg you, if civilians leave the shrine leave with them without your guns before 10am, and do not disobey orders. I know it is not good for you or me either, but this is a Marjaiya (religious authority) decision and it is so ordered.”
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The deal struck late on Thursday night by Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani and the rebel cleric called for the removal of all weapons from Najaf and the withdrawal of all foreign forces, leaving security to the police.
Within hours of Hojatoleslam al-Sadr’s call, the Mahdi guns were nowhere to be seen. They were not handed over to Iraqi government forces, but were smuggled out of the city centre during the morning on flatbed lorries and donkey carts. The Times saw Mahdi gunmen hiding AK47s and rocket-propelled grenade- launchers beneath sacking and old rags.
“How do we get these mortars out?” one Mahdi official muttered within earshot of The Times. “Cover them and do it discreetly, these are all media,” his commander said.
The weapons safely out of view, the Mahdi fighters then simply took off their green martyrs’ bandanas, slipped into the maze of medieval alleyways and melted into the multitudes of pilgrims marching through the shrine, many kissing the doors and weeping inside. Mahdi commanders proclaimed a victory. Sheikh Ahmed Shaibani said: “We proved to the entire world that the Marjaiya (religious scholars) are the ones who are in charge here and also that disbanding the Mahdi Army will never happen.”
Some Mahdi fighters declared their willingness to follow orders, and said that they would go back to their cities to carry out other duties. “Punishing alcohol-sellers and prostitutes and ensuring the safety and security of the community,” vouchsafed one street commander named Abu Zainab, manning the checkpoint where Mahdi fighters were depositing rocket- propelled grenades. Others were less happy, “frustrated”, they said, at the decision to abandon the holy shrine.
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Nevertheless, last night Najaf was silent, the deal still holding. As the Mahdi vanished, American troops retreated beyond the edge of the old city.
In their place Iraqi police in balaclavas and pick-up trucks swarmed around the alleyways.
At the end of a momentous day. Hojatoleslam al-Sadr was reported to have handed the shrine’s key back to Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani’s aides. “Moqtada Sadr has officially handed over control of the shrine,” Sheikh Hassan al-Husseini, one of the aides, said.
The fighting over, the propaganda campaign began. In mid-afternoon the police suddenly claimed to have found two dozen rotting bodies of people — including police — tortured and killed by the Mahdi Army.
Inside a “sharia court” just 50 metres from the shrine lay more than a dozen blackened bodies, their tongues and eyes hideously swollen. But beyond the fact that they were dead and left unburied, there was nothing to say who they were or how they were killed.
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“I blame Saddam Hussein. This is all a consequence of his regime,” Issam Qamis, a pilgrim from Basra, said. “He has gone, but he implanted hatred in the Iraqi people and we grew up with that.”