The attacks on holy sites in Iraq were meant to spark an uprising against occupying US forces and start a civil war with orthodox Sunni Muslims, writes Michael Jansen.
The authors of yesterday's slaughter of worshippers near the golden domed shrine of Iman Hussein in Kerbala and the Persianate Khadhamiya mosque in Baghdad meant to provoke the Shias on their holiest day at two of their holiest sites.
The obvious objective of the near simultaneous attacks was to spark spontaneous risings by the heterodox Shias against both the US occupation forces, blamed for pitching Iraq into anarchy, and the orthodox Sunnis who are resisting the democratic assumption of power by the country's Shia majority.
Yesterday was the tenth of Muharram, the first month of the Muslim calendar, and Ashura, a day of atonement observed by devout Sunnis as well as Shias.
The Prophet Muhammad adopted Ashura as a 24-hour fast after he fled from Mecca to Medina where he came into contact with Jewish customs, some of which he incorporated into Islamic practice in the expectation that the Jews, who had invited him to settle in the city, would convert.
After the Prophet and the Jews of Medina fell out, the fasting month of Ramadan supplanted Ashura, which became a recommended day of abstention for Sunnis. For Shias, Ashura is a personal day of atonement for the abandonment by their forebearers of the Prophet's grandson, Hussein, in the power struggle which raged during the first decades of the Muslim empire.
Hussein was leader of the Shias, or seceders, who insisted that only direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad could rule Muslims. He refused to acknowledge Yezid, who had been recognised as caliph by the Sunnis.
Hussein set off from Mecca to Iraq with a party of 78 warriors at the invitation of the citizens of Kufa, who promised protection but did not honour their pledge. Hussein and his men were surrounded on the arid plain near Kerbala by 4,000 seasoned troops fresh from the conquest of Persia.
After eight days of skirmishing, Hussein's exhausted and thirsty followers fell one by one. The people of Kerbala did not intervene. In desperation, Hussein whipped his horse and charged his enemies. He was slain and decapitated. His head was borne to Yezid.
Anguished by this event, a contemporary Arab poet cried out in pain: "See! see! the very earth is sick! And the lands shudder at the slaying of Hussein." According to tradition, the earth stood still for seven days, the stars collided with one another, and blood was found under every stone turned over in Jerusalem.
The murder of Hussein, whom the Shias considered the rightful heir to the caliphate, deepened the rift between the two sects and drove the Shias to revolt periodically against Sunni rulers. But the Sunnis held fast through the Umayyad, Abbasid and Turkic dynasties, the Ottoman Empire, British rule and the republic. Shias began to taste communal power only after the US occupied Iraq last year.
At the annual Ashura commemoration of Hussein's martyrdom, Shia penitents seek to cleanse themselves through corporal punishment for the betrayal of Hussein. To the beat of drums men and boys, often stripped to the waist or wearing backless shirts, walk through the streets striking their backs and shoulders with flails of chain, knotted rope and wire. Blood flows. Others cut their heads with swords. Women, enveloped in wide black cloaks, their heads covered, beat their chests till black and blue. On Ashura, the normally tempestuous Shias are at their most volatile and dangerous, ready to take offence over any slight, making an onslaught on their rituals a severe provocation.
Yesterday's Ashura atrocities were matched by two equally murderous attacks against Sunni Kurds in the northern city of Irbil on the Feast of Sacrifice which ends the annual Muslim pilgrimage. That attack, on February 1st, wreaked the highest toll since the bombing of the Shia shrine of Imam Ali, the father of Hussein, in Najaf on August 29th. On that occasion, a senior Shia figure, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr Hakim, was killed. Last month a Sunni cleric, Sheikh Dhamir Dhari, was murdered in Baghdad. The sheikh, who belongs to the powerful Dhari tribe, was one of the organisers of a Sunni movement seeking to defend Sunni interests while promoting rapprochement with the Shias.
US spokesmen blamed the Ashura bombings on Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian Islamist who fought against the US in the 2001 Afghan war. In a letter published last month in the London-based Arabic daily, al-Hayat, Zarqawi, a Sunni who is viciously anti-Shia, said the Shias and Kurds were co-operating with the US and should be punished for their treachery. He called for a "jihad [holy war] in Mesopotamia" which would pit Sunnis against Shias and Arabs against Kurds. His aim is to force the Sunnis of the region, who are the majority, to intervene, put down the Shias and Kurds, drive out US forces, and re-establish Sunni Arab rule over Iraq.
The strikes on the Kurds were claimed by Jaish Ansar al-Sunna, or the Army of the Protectors of the Sunna (teachings of the Prophet Muhammad), identifying it as a Sunni movement. Although the claim was not verified, this grouping was among a dozen insurgent organisations which issued a statement early last month warning Iraqis against co-operating with the US administration.
Kurdish officials blamed the Irbil attacks on a Kurdish Islamist group, Ansar al-Islam, said to be tied to al-Qaeda. But the Army of the Protectors of the Sunna indicated it was taking revenge for the suppression of Ansar al-Islam by Kurdish allies of the US.
While the Shias did not promptly respond to yesterday's events and carried on with the rites of Ashura, the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars condemned the bombings. The association blamed the US for destroying Iraq's own security agencies and failing to provide security. After expressing scepticism over Muslim culpability, the association said the attacks were "skilfully designed to incite sectarian conflict during this difficult time Iraq is experiencing".