Saboteurs blew up the two minarets of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra early Wednesday, in a repeat of the 2006 attack that shattered its famous golden dome and unleashed a wave of retaliatory sectarian violence that still bloodies Iraq. Sunni extremists of al-Qaida were quickly blamed.
The assault on the Askariya Shrine, one of the holiest in Shiite Islam, immediately stirred fears of a new round of intra-Muslim bloodshed, and prompted the 30-member bloc of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to suspend its membership in Iraq's parliament, threatening a deeper political crisis.
To ward off a surge of violence, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki quickly imposed an indefinite curfew on vehicle traffic and large gatherings in Baghdad. Before the curfew took hold, arsonists set fire to a Sunni mosque in western Baghdad, police said.
This could get rough.
With al Qaeda under increasing pressure from our offensive, they likely need that long-rumored civil war to break out in order to make the Sunni Arabs feel like they have no choice but to support al Qaeda for their own defense against enraged Shias.
While this might be just fine for al Qaeda in the short run, for the Sunni Arab population of Iraq which has been compelled to flee their homes in large numbers (they may be but ten percent of the population now, with 1.5 million or more Sunni Arab Iraqis now refugees abroad), this would seal their doom.
We need to do far better clamping down on any civil violence than we did after the February 2006 bombing. We (the Iraqis and ourselves) have the advantage today, at least, of realizing the consequences of failing to respond quickly. And we are on the streets already.
UPDATE: So far the reaction has been muted:
A handful of Sunni mosques were attacked or burned Thursday, but curfews and increased troop levels kept Iraq in relative calm a day after suspected al-Qaida bombers toppled the towering minarets of a prized Shiite shrine.
Whether this is because of increased appreciation of the danger of retaliation, the security presence, lack of Mahdi Army capacity to ramp up attacks, or is simply a relative calm before rage builds is unclear at this point.
