Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq
by Patrick Cockburn (Faber, £16.99)
In late August 2004, I found myself among about 2,000 poor Shia Iraqis in the ancient mosque at Kufa, near Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad. The second siege of Najaf—the first had been in April—was winding down after three weeks of intense fighting. The Kufa mosque had been struck by an American missile a few days earlier, outraging Shia believers across the world. Just inside the mosque’s entrance was a pile of the shoes of dead fighters. In the small office where I had taken refuge on a floor, a couple of dozen young men slumped next to me against the walls, bloodied, dusty and weary. A young mullah, lean and handsome—like many of Muqtada al-Sadr’s youthful lieutenants—played with the tail-fin of a mortar with a hand wrapped in a bloody bandage as he drew me diagrams of the battle with a finger on a dusty table.
My sanctuary inside the mosque was frightening enough for an American reporter with little Arabic. When I went outside to look for my translator and driver, I was even more scared, as angry crowds swirled about. But no one tried to hurt me in that wild couple of hours. American and European civilians in Iraq during the last five years have almost always felt safer in Shia regions and neighbourhoods than in Sunni ones.
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