The hundred-mile drive from Baghdad to Najaf usually takes about three hours. It is hot country with low dusty towns and villages built of mud brick. About halfway along the road there is a turn to the right marked by an arch in the form of a pair of swords meeting at the tips. They are double-tipped swords, curved like those of the Imam Ali, whose defeat in war in 657 was the founding event of the Shia faith. The turning leads to Karbala but the bridge on the way was blown up during last year’s invasion and has not been repaired.
Iraqis call the middle part of this route the Bermuda triangle, on account of the kidnappings, ambushes and roadside bombs that happen there. This is Shia country, but along the road there are two adjacent towns called Mahmoudiya and Latifiya with Sunni minorities of maybe 25 or 30 per cent. Saddam Hussein used to give extra support to such pockets of Sunnis. He knew that his co-religionists in places like these had a special stake in supporting his rule: they felt surrounded, which they were, and embattled, which they would become if the Ba’athist order were ever upended. With jobs, construction and money, Saddam took extra pains to secure their loyalty. The Shias dominate the population here south of Baghdad, but today it is Sunni violence that sets the tone.
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