Can we get Juan Cole or Vali Nasr or someone to chime in on the news we’re getting out of Iraq about this attempted attack on the city of Najaf?
I’m inherently suspicious of stories we’re hearing out of Iraq, especially if they include big body counts from fire fights (see Vietnam, subhed, egregious mumbojumbo). But the information coming out about this attempt attack seems very odd to me. The latest I’m hearing on the cable is that the plan was to disrupt the Ashura commemorations and perhaps assassinate Ayatollah Sistani. Now we hear that the attack was the work of a Messianic cult — one with “links to Saddam Hussein loyalists and foreign fighters [and] hoping the violence it planned would force the return of the “hidden imam,” a 9th-century Shiite saint who Shiites believe will come again to bring peace and justice to the world.”
‘Foreign fighters’ in this context usually refers to Sunni extremists, with al Qaida sympathies. Saddam loyalists, if secular, are almost all Sunni as well. So these guys were mounting an attack on Najaf in order to realize the central eschatological hope of the Shia? I’m sorry but that makes no sense. Other reports say alternatively that the attack was Sunni-backed or Shia-backed.
Now, I’m no expert on sectarian divisions in Iraq or Islam more generally. But certain things make no sense on their face. Perhaps this is just the fog of war. But something seems fishy to me. Who can add more facts?
Late Update: Juan Cole analyzes what happened here. The upshot, three or four largely or entirely contradictory accounts of what happened.
Later Update: Other reports suggest a ‘cult’ with a mix of Sunni and Shi’a elements (odd but anything’s possible). But Cole makes the point that it seems a bit odd that an obscure or unknown cult could mount enough firepower and organization to mount this kind of attack. Remember, this wasn’t a case of a group barricaded in a building. From what I understand this was a firefight on open ground.
