Iraqi's Skeptical After Second Shrine Bombing

By Ali al-Fadhily
June 21, 2007
AntiWar

...The Jun. 13 bombing that targeted the shrine's minarets were despite heavy Iraqi security presence and the US military continuing to impose a curfew on the city of Samarra.

The bombing last year was widely believed by Shi'ites to have been carried out by Sunni extremist groups, like al-Qaeda, who maintain a goal of stoking sectarian strife in Iraq.

However, the repercussions of the second bombing of the shrine have thus far been limited to a few attacks on Sunni mosques in Basra and Baghdad.

"We now realize the plot more than we did before," Mustafa Hussain from the predominately Shi'ite area of Sadr City in Baghdad told IPS, "I am not sure who is doing this and I do not have the habit of speculating, but now I, and most Iraqis, are sure it is just a conspiracy to divide Iraqis into Shi'ite and Sunnis. All this was planned and paid for by people outside our country and community."

...Nevertheless, many Iraqis believe the bombing was not carried out by al-Qaeda.

"They are dreaming of evicting the people of Samarra in order to deepen the wound in the Iraqi flesh," 35-year-old Yassir al-Samarrai'i, a local television reporter from Samarra told IPS in Baghdad, "Their problem is that Iraqis are still reluctant to engage in full scale civil war despite all the dirty business the occupiers have conducted to ignite it by these shrine explosions."

..."I am a Shi'ite, but I know for sure that Sunnis have the same respect we have for holy shrines and they would never do anything to humiliate their sacred status," 29-year-old Ruqaya Salih told IPS in Baghdad, "Americans must know that there are Iraqis who realize that they are planning to divide the community."

Very little reconstruction had been carried out since last year's bombing of the shrine, a fact that has angered both the Shi'ite and Sunni communities.

In stark contrast to the bombing of the shrine last year, IPS found many instances of solidarity between the two sects.

"They attacked ten mosques in Basra including the one that has the grave of Talha Bin Obaidillah, Mohammad's companion," Sheik Abdul-Wahab Hassan in Baghdad told IPS, "Sunnis will not fall for such acts, knowing the fact that their Shi'ite brothers would not commit such crimes except those Shi'ite who collaborate with the occupying forces and Iran."