Reuters  --  Arab News

NAJAF, Iraq, 19 April 2004 — Caught in a confrontation between US troops and a radical Shiite militia, residents of Najaf are fearful and angry, complaining their lives are in danger and the economy is suffering.

Most of the shops are closed. The streets around the city are crowded with gunmen holding rocket-propelled grenade launchers instead of the normal throngs of pilgrims and stalls selling religious paraphernalia.

Supporters of Moqtada Sadr whose militia launched an uprising against the US-led occupation this month, says Iraq’s Shiite religious establishment, based in Najaf, backs them in their struggle.

“We know that any assault from the Americans on Najaf will be the zero hour for the revolution all over Iraq,” said Sadr’s spokesman, Qays Al-Khazali. “The religious authority has a clear stand in providing us with moral support.”

But representatives of the four grand ayatollahs who form Iraq’s mainstream Shiite leadership have distanced themselves from the rebellion by Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia.

“Moqtada Sadr did not consult the religious authority when he started this crisis or when he created the Mehdi Army,” said a spokesman for Ishaq Al-Fayadh, a grand ayatollah. “It’s obvious he is trying to drag the religious authority into the confrontation.”

Religious leaders also fear the rebellion could postpone the planned handover of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30. Iraq’s Shiite majority, oppressed for decades by Saddam Hussein, is keen to take a role in governing the country. Much of the Mehdi Army is made up of young unemployed men from Baghdad’s Shiite slums or the deprived Shiite regions of southern Iraq. Many Najaf residents regard their presence with alarm and fear bloodshed.

“Before, we feared Saddam’s secret police. We didn’t dare say anything because they were everywhere. Now those gunmen are doing the same thing, they can come here and detain me, and no one can do anything to stop them,” said local businessman Jassem Hussein.

Some Shiites fear that unless a peaceful solution can be found, Sadr’s uprising will lead not just to more fighting with occupying troops but also to internecine Shiite conflict.

“If things are not solved peacefully it could lead to an internal explosion,” said Adnan Al-Asaadi, a senior figure in the Shiite Dawa party. While some locals come to Sadr’s offices in Najaf to show support, others come to ask about the fate of relatives seized by his militia.

Jafer Sadiq, a young man in his twenties, has sat outside Sadr’s offices for two days seeking word on his brother, a policeman in nearby Kufa who was detained last week.

“Just tell me what happened to him. If he is alive release him. If you killed him, give us back his body,” he told militiamen at the office. “Even Saddam used to give us back the corpses.”