ISTANBUL: Iraq unraveling as top Shiite cleric issues call to arms | Iraq | McClatchy DC
McClatchy Foreign StaffJune 13, 2014
ISTANBUL — The likely breakup of Iraq into feuding ethnic and sectarian bastions accelerated Friday as Iraq’s senior Shiite Muslim cleric broke years of support for the central government and decreed that every able-bodied Shiite man had a religious obligation to defend the sect’s holy sites from rebellious Sunni Muslims led by fighters from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
In answer to the call, thousands of Shiites _ many with militia experience from the sectarian war that pitted Sunnis against Shiites and killed thousands from 2006 to 2008 _ flooded the cities of Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala to receive weapons, enlist in organized units and receive their orders.
Hours later, President Barack Obama made it clear that the United States was unwilling to commit itself to the defense of a government that had been unable to resolve Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian differences.
“We're not going to allow ourselves to be dragged back into a situation in which, while we're there, we're keeping a lid on things, and after enormous sacrifices by us, as soon as we're not there, suddenly people end up acting in ways that are not conducive to the long-term stability and prosperity of the country,” Obama said.
With Sunni Islamists in control of much of the north and west, Kurds expanding their control of the long-contested Kirkuk region and Shiites gathering for sectarian war, the likelihood of any accommodation seemed remote.
Emma Sky, a fellow at Yale University who advised U.S. forces in Iraq until 2010, called the events “the slow death” of the Iraqi state in an interview with McClatchy.
Perhaps most telling was Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani’s religious endorsement of Shiite men taking up arms to defend “their homes, their cities and their holy places” from the Sunnis. Previously, Sistani had rejected militia activities and urged support for the central government, even during the darkest days of the 2006-08 sectarian war.
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