Najaf and the Problem of Sacred Sites in War

The battle for Najaf would seem, on the surface, to offer an easy victory for the coalition forces. The Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr has rightly been called little more than an urban street gang. It is not a trained guerrilla force, though it may have received some training from Iranian supporters in the past year. It is armed mostly with small arms and RPGs. It has little discipline. Under normal combat conditions, coalition forces should easily be able to subdue it. (At presstime, they were preparing to attempt that.)

But the Mahdi Army — at presstime, still negotiating the terms under which it would end its occupation of the Imam ‘Ali shrine in Najaf — has two major factors working for it and against the US and Iraqi forces it is confronting. One is the reluctance of both US and Iraqi leaderships to inflict civilian casualties in an urban area, but the second is even more potent: the Imam ‘Ali mosque itself. The tomb of ‘Ali, who is both the first Imam of Shi‘ism and, to Sunnis, the fourth of the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, is a profoundly important site to Muslims, Sunni as well as Shi‘ite. Damage to this holy place would incur the wrath of Shi‘ites everywhere, and of many Sunnis as well. The Mahdi Army knows this and chose to use the mosque as a headquarters: not so much a claim of religious sanctuary as a dare to the West to attack them in the holy precincts.

The US has sought to use Iraqi troops closest to the mosque, keeping Americans farther away, but it has been reluctant to see even an Iraqi assault on the mosque. Further complicating matters is the fact that the one man with enough religious prestige to possibly cut through the Gordian knot, Ayatollah ‘Ali al-Sistani, has been in London undergoing treatment for a health problem. Sistani, who had refused to leave Iraq for years, went first to Beirut and then to London for heart treatment, but had returned at presstime to attempt to defuse the situation in Najaf.

The fact that both US and Iraqi action has been constrained by the holiness and symbolism of the Imam ‘Ali Shrine has not meant they have avoided all sensistivities: like many holy cities, Najaf has a huge cemetery (larger than the old city of Najaf itself) where Shi‘ites from much of the Muslim world have desired to be buried, and that cemetery has been the scene of much fighting.

This Dossier examines aspects of the fight for Najaf in the context of the difficulty of fighting a war in an area where holy sites (or irreplaceable cultural monuments, for that matter), are located.

The Estimate has covered some of this ground previously. For an earlier discussion of Najaf, see the Dossier “Falluja and Najaf: The Historical Context of Two Cities,” in the issue of May 3, 2004. For Ayatollah Sistani, see “The Sistani Factor in Iraq,” in the issue of January 26, 2004. On the overall issues of Iraqi Shi‘ite factions, including Muqtada al-Sadr, see the (now somewhat overtaken by events) two-part Dossier in the issues of May 16 and May 30, 2003.

In the year 683 AD, during the second fitna or civil war within early Islam, a rebel leader named ‘Abdullah ibn Zubayr held the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The Caliph Yazid, ruling from Damascus, sent an army to take the holy cities. To the enduring scandal of Muslims, Yazid’s general bombarded Mecca with catapults, and during the siege the holy Ka‘aba itself caught fire, the wooden parts of the structure burning, and the sacred Black Stone itself — venerated as the center of the Meccan pilgrimage — broke in three pieces due to fire. Yazid died soon thereafter, and many saw this as divine punishment for the sacrilege. Yazid’s name was sometimes equated with the devil in later years, not only for the bombardment of Mecca but for his earlier role in the death of the Prophet’s grandson Imam Hussein, whose martyrdom is central to Shi‘ite history.

The bombardment of Mecca was shocking because the holy cities were considered sanctuary against military action (though the Prophet Muhammad had led campaigns against Mecca during his life in Medina). History is replete with incidents in which one side in a conflict has sought either sanctuary in a sacred spot, or has hoped to force its enemy to attack that site in order to infuriate the world. During both wars against Iraq, the US sought to avoid bombing near major archeological sites or historic treasures, despite Saddam Hussein’s propensity to site military equipment, including surface-to-air missiles, near major mosques and monuments. (Saddam himself gave no sanctuary during the Shi‘ite uprising of 1991, when the Shrine of Hussein in Karbala was badly damaged.)

The Middle East, as the seat of three major world religions, has plenty of religious sites, and plenty of conflict. In the Israeli-Palestinian original disputes over control of religious sites has been endemic. Israelis complain of the destruction of the historic synagogues of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem after 1948, and the profanation of Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives. (Just as Najaf has a huge cemetery, so many devout Jews over the centuries have had their bodies shipped to Jerusalem for burial.) Since Israel occupied Jerusalem in 1967, there have been various disputes over access to holy places. In Bethlehem during the current second intifada, Palestinians occupied the Church of the Nativity (traditional site of Jesus’ birth) for some time. The intifada itself is called the “al-Aqsa intifada” because it erupted after Ariel Sharon visited the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem, site of the Muslim al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock. That was perceived as a profanation.

Under the circumstances, it is thus clear that the US and Iraqi Interim Governments are reluctant to take any action which might lead to destruction of the Imam ‘Ali Shrine in Najaf. The damage to the cemetery has already provoked much outrage in the Muslim world.

The references above to the bombardment of Mecca, and the many disputes in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, do not exhaust historical examples of the sensitivity of religious sites. Destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem by the bizzarely fanatical Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim in the 11th century was a direct provocation for the Crusades; Greek Orthodox still dream of restoring Hagia Sophia to a church (long a mosque, it is now a museum).

And the destruction of religious sites can indeed provoke outrage and damage one side’s position in a conflict. The destruction of Coventry Cathedral in World War II helped rally British patriotic fervor; the Allied destruction of the ancient monastery of St. Benedict at Monte Cassino (thought to be a German observation post, apparently incorrectly) in 1944 upset not only Italians but Catholics and preservationists worldwide.

During World War II, of course, the strategic bombing campaigns against cities caused massive destruction of ancient cultural treasures, cathedrals, museums, and so on, in Germany and Japan. These were not deliberately targeted (nor, apparently, was Coventry Cathedral), but the inaccuracy of aerial bombardment at the time and the scorched earth tactics employed made such destruction inevitable.

Najaf is a case in which a resistance force, in this case the Mahdi Army, has essentially dared its enemies to attack the Shrine of Imam ‘Ali. There are parallels, including perhaps the case of ‘Abdullah ibn Zubayr mentioned at the outset, in which the holy Ka‘aba in Mecca itself was bombarded and damaged. (This is not the only case of profanation of Mecca and the Ka‘aba in Islamic history. In 930 AD, a radical sectarian group known as the Qarmatians raided Mecca and carried off the Black Stone itself, keeping it for some 20 years until forced to return it.)

The Military Problem
For military planners, the presence of holy sites, or cultural treasures, may be frustrating (though as noted, in World War II these were not always avoided as targets, in part because of the sheer war-to-the-last-ditch attitude of the combatants). But as Clausewitz recognized so famously, war is an extension of policy, and policy sometimes must control military decisions. Sanctuary is an ancient tradition in some cultures, but it is also not supposed to be abused by turning religious shrines into armed camps.

Still, sometimes one side may feel it has more to gain by daring its enemies to destroy a site than by evacuating it. That may be part of the calculus of the Mahdi Army. Ayatollah Sistani’s absence was referred to above, but his office in Najaf did negotiate a handing over of the keys, though that symbolic act had not, at presstime, led to evaucation of the shrine.

Why would the Mahdi Army want to see the shrine damaged? Presuming they are in fact devout Shi‘ites, that should be farthest from their minds. But the present war in Iraq is also seen, by some on both sides of the cultural fence, as a clash of civilizations. Just as some extreme American commentators have suggested bombing Mecca in the past, many radical jihadi Islamists want to turn the battle in Iraq into a battle between Islamic and Western civilizations.

Following the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, jihadi propaganda has sought to portray the United States as waging war on Islam as a whole. By equating the US with Israel, they include the Palestinian conflict in this global onslaught. Few if any Americans see matters that way, of course, and the United States supported Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, but such arguments are lost on uneducated supporters of radical jihad.

The Mahdi Army does not fit the usual jihadi pattern, if only because jihadis tend to denounce Shi‘ites as heretics. But it does follow a radical, Iranian-style view of the Western world as an adversary, and it may hope to rally support by inducing the US to damage the Shrine of Imam ‘Ali. The US has steered clear of that, but if the negotiations do not lead to withdrawal from the mosque, Iraqi government officials have indicated that they will take the shrine by force. Prime Minister ‘Iyad ‘Allawi is a Shi‘ite, but a secular one and a former Ba‘athist; and even if only Iraqi troops are involved in taking the shrine, the US will be blamed by the street.

‘Ali and the Sunnis
Much of the press coverage of Najaf has emphasized the holiness of the Shrine of ‘Ali to Shi‘ites. Certainly ‘Ali is the central figure of Shi‘ism; the name itself originated from the term shi‘atu ‘Ali, the faction or party of ‘Ali. To the Shi‘a, ‘Ali was the rightfully designated successor of the Prophet Muhammad. ‘Ali was the Prophet’s first cousin, married the Prophet’s daughter Fatima, and was father of the Prophet’s two grandsons, Hasan and Hussein. Since the Prophet had no sons who lived to adulthood, the Shi‘ites trace the senior male descent through Hasan and Hussein. ‘Ali is the first Imam of Shi‘ism and a figure of enormous importance.

But ‘Ali is not ignored in Sunni tradition. His role as the Prophet’s cousin, first male convert (the Prophet’s wife Khadija was the first convert of all), and son-in-law, one of the Prophet’s closest companions, gives him great respect. Moreover, Sunnis recognize ‘Ali as the fourth Caliph (successor) of the Prophet. The difference is that to Sunnis the Caliphs were to be chosen by the community, the umma, and thus they recognize ‘Ali as Caliph from 656 AD, while Shi‘ites treat him as the rightful Imam from the Prophet’s death in 632 AD.

Furthermore, Sunnis recognize the first four Caliphs as the rashidun or “Rightly-guided” Caliphs, and ‘Ali is the fourth of these. ‘Ali is one of the most common male names among Sunnis as well as Shi‘ites.  (One of the central works of Shi‘ism, the Nahj al-Balagha or collected sayings and doings of ‘Ali, was compiled by a Sunni scholar.) So while the Shrine of ‘Ali is historically maintained by the Shi‘ite religious establishment in Najaf, it is also the tomb of a man deeply venerated in the Sunni tradition as well. This adds to the reasons why the US has sought to avoid damage to the shrine: it could enrage not only Shi‘ites but Sunnis as well.

As this issue went to press, it seemed possible that the Mahdi Army would indeed evacuate the shrine, but a precedent had been established of using a holy shrine as sanctuary for insurgents.

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