Thoughts of a US stooge have Shiites seething

By PHIL REEVES in Najaf

The message could not have been clearer if the Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani himself had broadcast it from the loudspeakers above the breathtaking blue mosaics that line the outer walls of his mosque.

The powerful cleric's followers in Najaf, one of the holiest Shiite cities, will not accept an Iraqi Government run by a stooge of the occupying Americans.

They are not interested in General Jay Garner, the rumbustious former missile contractor, who - 240km further down the Euphrates - was chairing the first meeting of selected Iraqi opposition groups. Objecting to his role, the largest Shiite party, the Iran-based Supreme Council for the Revolution in Iraq, refused to go to the event.

And they have nothing good to say about Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi businessman, convicted fraudster and favourite of the Pentagon hawks. After decades in exile, he was last week spirited into Nasiriyah by United States forces, where he has since formed his own militia.

Young bearded men and old alike - drawn by the sight of a foreigner who had not swept into Najaf with the US tanks - yesterday swamped this reporter, desperate for these views to be heard.

As we sat in the sun and the swirling dust, their theme was the same, time and again. They were delighted the Americans had got rid of Saddam, whose thugs had oppressed the Shiites, killing clerics and closing mosques, and whose social engineering had left them in poverty.

The US and Britain must fulfil their obligations under Geneva Conventions as occupiers. The allies must establish order, end the looting and provide the shattered landscape with power, medicine and food supplies - and then leave.

"Iraq has to be run by people from Iraq - people who lived in Iraq and not from the outside," said one of the crowd, Favel Mohammed Roda, a fiery-eyed man in a long white robe. "And then Americans must get out." The others all shouted agreement.

It is a message that has to be taken seriously. Iraq's Shiite community is seething ominously.

It is consumed by fears about its place in the new Iraq. Being the majority, the Shiites talk hopefully of democracy, but are haunted by suspicions that conspiracies are afoot to split their ranks.

Some here say these plots are authored by die-hard Saddamists; others suspect the hand of the CIA, suggesting that the US is moving to prevent them becoming the most powerful force in the land by sheer weight of numbers.

Yesterday such suspicions were thriving in the narrow lanes of Najaf. A crowd of men, heads of Shiite families, had donned their robes and turbans and travelled in from outlying villages.

They gathered outside Ayatollah al-Sistani's headquarters, brandishing banners proclaiming the unity of Iraq's Shiites. They had come to defend the cleric after learning that his premises had been surrounded by armed men, who had demanded that he leave Iraq within 48 hours.

Al-Sistani was nowhere to be seen, but his son appeared to say that he was safe. "There is no Government and there are a lot of weapons in the hands of dangerous people. That's why these people have come to protect the ayatollah," he said.

It was one of several warning signs. The worse of these so far came last week when one of al-Sistani's close associates, Abdul Majid al-Khoei, was stabbed to death by a mob inside the shrine.

I visited the spot - but was warned to leave as it was not safe for non-Muslims.

The son of one of Najaf's most revered clerics (beside whom he now lies), Khoei had been an acquaintance of Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, and Jack Straw, his Foreign Minister.

Days earlier he had returned to Iraq after 12 years in exile in London, bearing the weight of Washington and Whitehall's hopes that he would help lead Iraq's Shiites towards a new pro-US government, and away from the magnetic pull of neighbouring Iran.

His links with the US may have cost him his life.

"He is so close to the Americans that he might as well have driven in on top of an American tank," said Roda.

But he may also have been killed because he arrived at the shrine with a cleric loathed by Najaf's Shiites who say that he has ties to Saddam's killers who murdered another revered cleric, Mohammed al-Sadr, in 1998.

Nor is this the only evidence that the gratitude of the Shiites has failed to turn them towards their "liberators."

In the southern town of Kut, a strongly anti-American cleric, Said Abbas, this week took control of city hall, and surrounded himself with 30 armed guards.

Outside his makeshift headquarters a crowd of several hundred Iranians living in Iraq gathered to protest against the American-led invasion. They singled out the one man they know that the Pentagon's hardliners favour.

"No to Chalabi!" they shouted.

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Herald Feature: Iraq war