Mosque Bombing

The Askariya Mosque:

It has been the insurgent's primary strategy for quite some time to divide Shi'ite and Sunni through attacks. More than two years ago now, Zarqawi's letter advocating the instigation of a civil war in Iraq was captured by Coalition forces. When you are fighting a disciplined and dedicated enemy, now and then they will land a blow in spite of all efforts. What remains is to consider the damage, and decide how to repair the wounds as best we can.

First, the damage. Omar reports that both Sunni and Shi'ite mosques in Baghdad were protesting the attack yesterday. Bill Roggio provides a fact sheet on the damaged shrine, and also a useful point of speculation:

The Byzantine political situation in Iraq has just become more chaotic with the destruction of the Golden Mosque, but it also may provide an opportunity for Sunnis and Shiites to see just how close to the abyss they are with respect to a civil war, and work towards avoiding such a situation through political means. The Shiites currently control the levers of power in Iraq, including the military and police apparatuses, and could easily decimate Sunni mosques and cities if they so desired. The Sunnis have far more to lose by a sectarian war than the Shiites, and they know this. al-Qaeda may have scored a short term gain with yet another shocking display of violence, but this could be another miscalculation that further alienates them in the eyes of the Iraqi people.

What are the odds of that? We can calculate them only partially by observing the sectarian violence. More dangerous is the news that the main Sunni political group has responded by suspending its participation in the negotiations as to the government's formation: that has to be the first thing to be fixed.

That is the bad news. We have to adjust that calculation by noting that both Sunni and Shi'ite leaders, including especially al Sistani, have called for calm. We can further adjust our idea of the odds by getting a sense of who is being blamed for the attacks: Omar's initial reaction that "foreign" terrorists had to be responsible, as no Iraqi would do such a thing, is mirrored by Iran's reaction and similar reactions from other hostile clerics:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, says the US and Israel blew up the Shia shrine in Iraq.... Shaikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, a leader Sunni scholar, said: "We cannot imagine that the Iraqi Sunnis did this. No one benefits from such acts other than the US occupation and the lurking Zionist enemy."

While it's never good to have false charges aimed at you, there is a silver lining to both of these statements. They indicate a general sense in the region that foreign, rather than Iraqi, elements carried out the bombing. If that is the common understanding among most Muslims, what will become important is evidence as to which elements -- al Qaeda, or the US/Zionist menace -- were responsible. The evidence will not demonstrate that the US was responsible, because the US was not responsible. Therefore, we must adjust our odds in this way: if the evidence shows that foreign terrorist groups were responsible, the public's mental ground should be fertile for receiving that information. Such evidence would tend to create out of this a unifying rather than a divisive trend for in the medium to long term, immediate sectarian violence notwithstanding.

I have a last thing to say about it. Several articles have noted Sistani's "warning" that Shi'ite militias might undertake guarding the shrines if the Iraqi government could not protect them. Given the role of militias in the sectarian violence, that is obviously worrisome to some. Yet we ought to remember that all such militias are not the same: Sadr's "Madhi army," or what remains of it, is one thing; Sistani's own forces, under his leadership, another. This is an opportunity to give honor and shift prestige among those various militias, by choosing one and giving it the task Sistani envisions for it.

After all, why shouldn't Shi'ites protect their holy sites? Much like the Swiss Guard protects the Vatican, it makes perfect sense for the holiest sites to be protected by believers. It would be entirely sensible for the Iraqi government to recognize that fact, and give control of a small piece of ground surrounding (say) the Shrine of Ali and other critical mosques to a selected religious militia, one that was relatively trustworthy. That would raise that particular militia's prestige among those Shi'a likely to join militias, which would tend to be stabilizing; also, it would create a precedent that the government had the authority to choose (and could therefore replace) which militia could fulfill that duty.

It would also create a buffer for the government in the case of a future successful attack. Because the primary responsibility for preventing attacks in these mosques would belong to the sectarian group, there will be less popular blame and dissatisfaction with the Iraqi police. Consider the alternative: another successful attack, after the government had taken steps to prevent the militias from adopting a defensive posture.

The enemy will not cease attempting to attack; it is probable that there will someday be another success. If that day comes, the government will be better positioned to handle it if it has this buffer than if it does not.