KARBALLA – THE CITY OF THE PEACE

31 May, 2005
Joe Carr (Infoshop News)

I just spent two days in the southern Iraqi city of Karballa. Getting there was a bit of trick, we had to drive through the dangerous "Sunni Triangle" and dozens of checkpoints. It was particularly bad the day we left because the US was beginning "Operation Lightening", where they planned to completely surround Baghdad and "sweep" the city in an attempt to appear offensive and test the new Iraqi security services. The major highway was completely blocked by a huge convoy of trucks carrying tanks, equipment and supplies. We tried for over and hour with hundreds of other cars to get through on the side roads, but it eventually became clear that it was impassible and we had to go around another way.

Driving down along the Euphrates was absolutely gorgeous. Small simple villages inhabit areas lush with palm trees and forest life. There are also many ruins from Iraq’s ancient past, including many built by Shiite pilgrims on their way to Najaf and Karballa, and some left-overs from the Roman and British occupations. Karballa itself is amazing; it’s probably my favorite Iraqi city so far.

Karballa is an incredibly significant city in Shiite Muslim history. According to Shiite theology, the Prophet Mohammad (may peace and blessings be upon him) appointed Imam Ali (Mohammad’s cousin who married Mohammad’s daughter Fatima) as his successor. After the Prophet died in 632AD, one of his closest friends, Abu Bakr, was elected Caliph (successor). However, a significant portion still believed that Ali was the rightful successor and followed him, calling themselves the Shiite, or "partisans of Ali". Eventually, Ali became Caliph after his supporters assassinated the successors of Abu Bakr. Ali was then challenged by Muawiyyah, then governor of Damascus, who became Caliph after Ali was assassinated. Ali’s son Hussein led an army to challenge the new ruler (the Sunnis) and was killed in Karballa in 680AD; thus beginning centuries of Sunni rule and Shiite struggle.

Thousands of Shiite flood the city every year to pay homage. We observed many families of pilgrims sleeping on rugs and sheets of cardboard outside the shrine. Though foreigners are a common site in this city, we were encouraged to don traditional dress. It was fun for me to sport the long white robe and head scarf, but was rather burdensome for the women who had to wear layers of thick black cloth in the scorching heat.

The Shiite built two elaborate, ornate shrines in Karballa to commemorate Imam Hussein and his brother Abbas. There’s a third shrine in Najaf where Imam Ali is buried, which is where the US faced off with Muqtada Al Sadr a year ago. An official at Imam Hussein’s shrine explained that the Shiite have always had a spirit of resistance, inspired by the "revolution of Imam Hussein". This has brought them much trouble from Arab leaders who want to dominate and control them; Saddam Hussein (aided and allowed by the US) repeatedly massacred the Shiite in order to squash their revolts. The Shiite have also been resisting the US occupation, but not as intensely because the US has favored the Shiite and put them into power. Karballa is therefore one of the most peaceful cities in Iraq.

Karballa is now allowed to police itself; the US only controls the perimeter. However, the US has committed its share of atrocities in the city. In its wars of domination around the world, the US frequently uses a horrific anti-personnel weapon called a cluster bomb, which explodes before it hits the ground and sends out hundreds of other grenade-like explosive devices. Many of them do not explode on impact, but can sit undetected for long periods of time and then be set off by an unsuspecting passerby, often a child. Farmers in Laos are still getting injured and killed from cluster bombs dropped by the US in the 1960’s. For obvious reasons, cluster bombs are forbidden under international law, but the US continues to use them. In Afghanistan, the US dropped cluster bombs and food packages that were the same color.

During the invasion, the US dropped these gruesome weapons all over Karballa, "Even in my neighborhood" a human rights worker said. He told us about an Iraqi man who worked tirelessly to find and diffuse unexploded cluster bombs in Karballa because US forces refused to deal with the situation. "He found and diffused over 5200 in Karballa" he explained to us, but was eventually killed when some went off while he tried to remove them from a school. "US military officials visited his family to acknowledge his service" he said, "but they didn’t give them any compensation because they claimed the US didn’t kill him directly".

Human Rights Watch of Karballa (not directly affiliated with Human Rights Watch) was one of the first organizations founded after the US invasion. Like many grassroots organizations in Iraq, they began with no outside help, grounded only in their own experience and their belief in justice. CPT became acquainted with them two years ago when their director passed by our vigil of fasting and praying against the US occupation in a major Baghdad square. Along with documenting US violence like the cluster bombs, HRWK does a lot of work around mass graves. They were the first organization to discover mass graves in Iraq, and have now documented 42 of them in and around Karballa. They said four of them are full of Kurdish bodies apparently brought down from the north, but the rest are from the Shiite uprisings in 1988 and 1991. The US is directly complicit in the 1991 massacres, because they occurred in the "no-fly zones" monitored by US forces. Though the US had turned against Saddam by that time, they did not want a Shiite revolution because the US feared they’d be too powerful if allied with the Shiites of Iran. The human rights worker said that US planes stood down and allowed Saddam’s helicopters to massacre thousands of Shiite and Kurdish rebels. The US not only failed to support this popular uprising against Saddam, but they specifically enabled Saddam to brutally squash it.

"I’ll never forget seeing the bodies, one piled on top of the other" the human rights worker said, "and we will work to keep it from happening again by embodying principles of peace. We are proud to stand side-by-side with CPT as we work towards true democracy in Iraq."

He ended by thanking us and said "We hope you feel welcome in Karballa, the city of the peace."