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| STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL | |
 August 25, 2004  | |
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Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani returned to Iraq Wednesday after undergoing surgery in London, urging his Shiite Muslim following to participate in a mass demonstration against the ongoing violence in Najaf. Ray Suarez speaks with John Burns of The New York Times from Baghdad about the situation.
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JOHN BURNS: Well, I think the end game in Najaf is getting evermore complicated and in some respects evermore dangerous. Tonight, there's every sign that the United States intends to try and bring the siege of the shrine to a conclusion before Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani reaches Najaf because if they do not bring it to conclusion, if Iraqi troops do not effectively control the shrine by the time that the Grand Ayatollah arises, then there will be a very complicated situation because he has summoned, as you know, Shiites from across Iraq to converge on Najaf, on the shrine beginning tomorrow to be led by him.
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| Was Ali al-Sistani's departure timed? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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JOHN BURNS: You know, there's something crucial we do not know. There's much we don't know about Grand Ayatollah Sistani and his intentions. What we do not know is was his absence in London these last three weeks for an angioplasty operation, a heart operation, which seems to have been genuine but was it timed so that he would not be out of the country for precisely the period when the United States was mounting a major military operation to regain control of the old city of Najaf and the shrine? It seems to me there has to be a suspension of critical faculties to believe that there is no connection there. But the question is: Did he do that knowing the operation was coming? Did the United States contrive that he would leave because there is no doubt that Sistani would like to see Sadr's military power removed from Najaf, indeed crushed. And what assurances does the United States have now that it is within literally tens of meters of gaining control of that shrine that Sistani will if you will stick with them? The nightmare scenario would be if he now presents himself as an ally of Sadr's now mostly disarmed followers in reclaiming the shrine at the last minute from American attack. We simply don't know and only time and perhaps tomorrow will tell. |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Stance of the interim government | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| RAY SUAREZ: Has the still quite young Iraqi government made its wishes known on the movements of the Ayatollah and the use of American force around Najaf?
That probably will happen either tonight or tomorrow morning in the shape of an increasingly important junior minister in the government, Kasim Daoud, who seems to have become Allawi's right-hand man for negotiations. So clearly they're trying to work out something with him. What that is we don't know. But what we do know is that in the last few hours in Najaf, the intensification of the attack on the shrine area has reached really quite critical proportions.
But Sadr, even in military defeat, would emerge from this in some ways strengthened. He has lost several hundred fighters. It is not clear he won't himself be arrested. It is not clear where he is. He seems to have fled the shrine and fled the immediate area of the shrine. But if he emerges from this a free man and manages to get himself back to Sadr City and is not arrested, he will of course have enhanced his stature among his constituency, the impoverished Shiite underclass. |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Risk to the American forces | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| RAY SUAREZ: Is there a high risk for American forces in launching such intense operations around the religious landmark that is revered by more than 100 million Shias around the world?
They've actually shown us videos of that occurring. And there seems little doubt to say that that has happened but it also seems to be little doubt that some American fire has hit the outer walls of the shrine. No serious damage but it's very easy to see how this can be exploited against the United States. And I have to say that if we look - if we pull back from the situation in Najaf, we look at the situation in Fallujah, Ramadi, Najaf, Samara, and I could name a dozen other cities, one gets more and more the impression that the United States is playing, as we say in England, an away match here, and is not at all certain, not only of the crowd, but of the rules by which it's playing. It is dealing with some extremely wily people -- Sistani not least amongst them. RAY SUAREZ: John Burns in Baghdad. Thanks a lot. |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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RAY
SUAREZ: John Burns welcome. Now that Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is back in Iraq,
what does he have planned? 
And
it seems highly unlikely that that could occur under American guns and to reverse
that assumption, if American guns, tanks and air power were being used in the
vicinity of the shrine tomorrow, Thursday, as they have been today, and there
were large numbers of Iraqi Shiites attempting to reach that shrine, the situation
could reach a very critical point indeed.
RAY
SUAREZ: Well, the stated reason for the Sistani march is to bring an end to the
siege in Najaf. Would American forces have a problem with standing down if he
tried to bring it to an end that way? 
JOHN
BURNS: Well, they have been very tough indeed in their statements of the last
72 hours and as of tonight, encouragingly, Prime Minister Allawi has sent a delegation
from his own government, down to Basra, ostensibly to meet with Sistani. 
Our
own correspondent today, very experienced correspondent, Dexter Filkins, told
me that in many years of covering wars and armed confrontations, he had never
felt quite so much at hazard as he did while stationed immediately opposite the
gates of the shrine today with American tanks firing down the streets immediately
around him, snipers shooting at people crossing the ground in front of the shrine
-- we would imagine, we would hope, shooting at people that have been identified
as Sadr's supporters, armed supporters, we are not sure of that but one would
presume that would be the case, and air power being used to drop 500 bombs, very
close to the shrine. Clearly there was a great haste in these last hours to try
and close out the occupation of the shrine. 
And
it could be that perhaps Sistani and the Americans are working either in explicit
or understood cooperation; that is to say, the American objective will be to get
Sadr and his armed people out of the shrine. Having recovered the shrine and presumably
having put Iraqi troops immediately around it, they can then return the shrine
to Sistani, its rightful, if you will, keeper, and do it through the auspices
of the new Allawi government. That would be seen to be something of a victory.
JOHN
BURNS: Very high risk. There has been some rather minimal damage to the shrine.
Some of it, the American forces say inflicted by Sadr forces inside the shrine
firing mortars and rockets over the walls at the Americans.