One week after suicide bombings killed 181 of their kin there is increasingly only one authority for Iraq's Shias -- and it is not the Iraqi Governing Council. Graham Usher reports from Karbala One week after an Ashura that left more than 100 people dead a veneer of normalcy has returned to Karbala. Around the Imam Hussein mosque that commands the city's heart the market is thriving, re-energised by trade. On the main plaza -- where a suicide bomber went up in a sheet of flame -- taxis are shuttling back and forth to Baghdad, ferrying the last maimed pilgrims home. There are reminders of course. The colonial facades of the city's hotels and courts are draped by long black flags, the colour of lamentation. Outside tents pitched by the Red Cross women -- mostly Iranians -- seek redress for their dead and missing. But the gravest change is not so much in the face of the city, says Karbala ex-governor, Sheik Ali Hussein Kamuna. It is in attitude: "As a city the bombings made very little impact. After two or three hours calm had been restored and the Ashura ceremonies continued. But the bombings have left a massive negative impression among the people." Prior to the attacks Karbala's Shias -- like their brethren elsewhere in Iraq -- exuded a quiet sense of self-confidence. For the first time in years they were allowed to celebrate their religious identity unmolested by Saddam Hussein's police and mukhabarat (Intelligence) forces. They felt they were on the cusp of translating their numerical strength in Iraq into political power, not so much as Shias but as long denied patriots. "Inshallah, next year we will be rid of the occupation and the Shias will have a real representation in government. This will unite all Iraqis," said Mahdi Ali, a tea vendor, a day before the bombings. The self-confidence is gone -- replaced by a snarling anger, stoked by ancient senses of grievance and vulnerability. "I blame the Americans," snaps Sarjar, a taxi driver. "They have the equipment to detect the terrorists but didn't use it. They're not liberators; they're occupiers. We liberated Iraq in 1991 -- until the Americans let Saddam Hussein use his helicopters against us." But the anger is not only against the Americans. "The bombings discredited the Iraqi police forces in people's eyes," says Kamuna. "They were shown to be weak, badly trained, uncoordinated. They arrested innocents and let suspects escape. This was their second major disaster in Karbala. The first was last October when Moqtada Al-Sadr's men tried to take over the Imam Abbas mosque. [Ayatollah Ali] Sistani's people had to defend the shrine. The police did nothing. Eight people were killed." Into the fracture between people and government have stepped militias, linked to one or other of the Shias' religious movements, like Sadr's Mahdi army or the Badr Brigades affiliated to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Unlike during the Ashura -- when they were everywhere -- they are now mostly confined to barracks. But their power is spreading. In Karbala, Sadr's men are fortifying their mosques and manning roadblocks. The Badr Brigades have their own courts and prisons. In the absence of any central authority anyone can trust, the militias have assumed the mantle of protectors. "[US General John] Abizaid speaks against us," says a Badr man. "But the people want us to protect them. They don't trust the Iraqi police anymore. They don't trust the Americans to prevent the attacks." But it is less a case of the militias responding to the people's needs, says Kamuna. It is more the militias "exploiting the bombings" to serve their own political aims. "We don't need militias -- unless we want to turn Iraq into Lebanon. We know once the parties have militias, the militias will rule according to the parties. Everyone now wants to show he has influence over the people, to establish a popular base among them. Iraqis still see the gun as the ultimate source of authority." Iraqis see a similar power play on the political arena. Last week, five Shia members on the Interim Governing Council (IGC) -- advised by Sistani -- refused to sign a Fundamental Law governing Iraq's interim period. He had protested a clause that effectively gives Iraq's Kurdish minority a veto over any constitution approved by an Iraqi Arab majority. Under duress (and apparently with Sistani's blessing) the five eventually put pen to paper on Monday. But the cleavage between the religious authority and political leaders was clear -- not least in Karbala. "To me the only government is the marjaiyya [the Shia religious leadership in Najaf] -- the political parties don't count," shrugged one local. And the marjaa 's view is known. "Any law prepared for the transitional period will not gain legitimacy except after it is endorsed by an elected national assembly," said Sistani, in a fatwa, on Monday. In other words, "any political leadership that is unelected by the Iraqi people is illegitimate in our eyes," explained his representative in Karbala, Sheikh Abdel- Mahdi Al-Karbalai. Two histories tie into this Shia structure of feeling. One is the profound belief that having led the Iraqi Arab revolt in 1920 the Shias were then punished for it when Britain gave power to a Hashemite Sunni monarch imported from outside. The altercations over the Fundamental Law -- signed in the face of "profound reservations" expressed by their supreme religious cleric -- raise the fear that that experience is about to be repeated. The second is the Shias deep distrust of all political leaderships, including its own. "In the 1991 uprising we fought Saddam alone. None of the political parties supported us -- and the Badr Brigades were an army in those days," says one native of Karbala. Out of such fears -- fanned anew by the bombings and the seal of illegitimacy now placed on the IGC -- more and more Shias are turning to Sistani as their sole source of authority, political as well as religious. He has become their unassailable pillar in an Iraq made of shifting sands. Whether Sistani seeks this political role or not, the allegiance he now commands is vast, as is its threat. "If Sistani were to call for a Jihad against the US we would drop everything and fight -- all of us," says the native.
