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Distrust Breaks the Bonds Of a Baghdad Neighborhood
A herder tends his flock in the barricaded streets of Tobji, a neighborhood where Sunnis and Shiites long coexisted. Shiite militiamen have targeted Sunnis at checkpoints.
(The Washington Post)
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That day, a group of concerned tribal elders and businessmen, both Sunnis and Shiites, met to discuss ways to stop the violence from escalating.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]"They came and said this violence will never end unless we reconcile," Egheidi said. "Many of them were Shia in the neighborhood, and they knew us very well. We knew they were on our side."
The group decided to hold a tribal reconciliation gathering, a traditional mechanism used to solve conflict among Iraq's tribes. The grievances of both the Egheidat and the Mahdi Army would be addressed through negotiations and the payment of fasil , or blood money. Both sides agreed to meet the next day.
Day Three
An hour before the meeting, gunmen attacked a Mahdi Army checkpoint and killed four of its men, including Abu Mohammed's 16-year-old nephew, Omar. The Mahdi Army immediately blamed the Egheidat.
"They killed our men, and then kicked them to see if they were still alive," said Abu Mohammed. "Then they shot them in the head to make sure they were dead."
Abu Mohammed recalled that he and his men ran straight to the Egheidat area. "We opened fire on them," he said matter-of-factly. A gun battle followed. "They were shooting at us from the mosque. This is God's home. They defiled the house of God. So we shot at it with an RPG, and the minaret was hit."
The fighting raged until U.S. and Iraqi soldiers entered the fray and sealed off the neighborhood.
"The militiamen, when they saw the American army, they fled at extraordinary speed," said Abdul Sattar, who was too afraid to leave his house to go to work this day. "They jumped into houses. One woman saw one of them in her house and fainted."
Abu Mohammed described jumping into houses as a tactical move that the Mahdi Army often uses because its members know U.S. troops rarely remain long inside a neighborhood. "We didn't want to confront them," he said.
When Abu Mohammed returned to his home, enraged, he fired at the houses of his Sunni neighbors, even though they were not Egheidat. A Sunni neighbor, on hearing the gunfire, came out clutching an AK-47 assault rifle.
"I shot at him," said Abu Mohammed. "He bent down, and the bullet struck his mother in the arm. Then I walked out into the neighborhood and shouted: 'Any Sunni I see in the street is my enemy. No Sunni will stay in Tobji. The Sunnis are infidels.' " Egheidat tribal leaders denied any involvement in the attack on the checkpoint, blaming radical Sunni insurgents seeking to deepen the divisions in Tobji.
"We'll pay 10 times the amount -- not four times, as tradition dictates -- if what they are saying is true," Egheidi said, referring to blood money. The reconciliation meeting was postponed. That night and the following day, the streets lay silent.
