The End of Iraq (1)

By Peter W. Galbraith

Iraq's deadliest terrorist attack killed no one.

The Askariya shrine, one of the holiest Shia sites in Iraq, was severely damaged by a large explosion in Samarra in February 22, 2006, 60 miles (95km) north of Baghdad.

In the early morning hours of February 22, 2006, armed men stormed the Askariya shrine in Samarra, sixty miles north of Baghdad. They handcuffed the four guards, and left them in a side room. Working for several hours, the men placed several hundred pounds of explosives at strategic points under the shrine's golden dome. At 6:55 A.M., they detonated the explosives, probably with a cell phone. The dome collapsed and a shrine dating back to the ninth century was in ruins.
For centuries, Iraq's Shiites brought a saddled horse to the Askariya shrine. The horse waited for th return of Mohammed al-Mahdi, the twelfth and last Imam who went into hiding in 878 in a cave under the shrine. Still a child when last seen, th Imam communicated with his followers through an intermediary for seventy years before contact ceased. Shiites believe he is still alive. His return will usher in an era of justice to be followed by the Judgment Day. The powerful Caliph of Baghdad, the spiritual head of th rival Sunni

The Askariya shrine before explosion in 22, February 2006.

branch of Islam, had ordered the Mahdi's grandfather, the tenth Imam Ali al-Hadi, brought to Saamara in a kind of house arrest. The Shiites believe that he had Hadi poisoned in 868 and that he ordered Hadi's son, the eleventh Imam Hasan al-Askari, killed six years later. The faithful hid the twelfth Imam to spare him the same fate.
Iraq's Shiite majority see the men who destroyed the Askariya shrine as successors to the Caliph's assassins, and with good reason. Almost certainly, the shrine was destroyed by al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the Iraqi offshoot of the organization that brought down New York's World Trade Center. Al-Qaeda seeks to restore the Sunni Caliphate and considers adherents to the Shiite branch of Islam as apostates deserving of death.
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In the weeks that followed the Samarra bombing, 184 Sunni mosques were destroyed or vandalized. Sectarian violence killed more than one thousand Sunnis and Shiites.
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Baghdad's mixed neighborhoods became armed camps.
The End of Iraq, page 1-2.

To be continued...
Pictures, maps and titles in this article are not from the book "The End of Iraq".