Bus loads of Iranian pilgrims arrive every day at this city’s Askari Shrine, one of Shiite Islam’s holiest places, which was badly damaged by a bombing four years ago that prompted reprisal killings and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.
The city, where firefights between US soldiers and Sunni insurgents took place as recently as last year, is now generally peaceful — and has been presented as a model of the harmony that can be achieved in other violent areas of the country.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki, who is running for re-election, has said that Iraq’s security forces are able to keep the peace in Iraq without any US role. But in Samarra, local commanders do almost nothing without checking with the US military first, raising concerns about what will happen after the scheduled departure of US combat troops at the end of August and the exit of all US forces from the country by the end of next year.
Even in its peace, there are rumblings of discontent in Samarra.
The city’s pacification has meant its division by a long stretch of gray blast wall separating the shrine and its pilgrims from the rest of the city, by rare — and even then, often brittle — social interactions between Sunnis and Shiites, and by the presence of dozens of police and army checkpoints. The economy is ruined and the danger of fresh violence persists.
Still, Samarra has come so far from its days as a place of unrelenting violence that many in Iraq insist that it can ultimately be an example of nation building for the rest of the country. There is agreement among both the US military and the Iraqi government that Samarra must succeed if Iraq is to move forward without further fits of sectarian killing.
“National reconciliation started here when the people asked for international help in rebuilding the Askari Shrine,” said Mahmood Khalef Ahmad, Samarra’s Sunni mayor, who was wounded by al-Qaeda gunmen a few years ago. “What we have achieved here should be a clear example to other provinces in Iraq.”
Much of that success, however, is because of the generally unseen hand of the US, even as Americans minimize their current role in Samarra. Publicly, Ahmad is also dismissive of the continuing US influence in Samarra. But the mayor was appointed to his post by the US military, and as is the case of almost every other political, tribal or security official in town, he consults with US military and civilians on an almost daily basis — though almost always in private.
The transition from the US’ exclusively military role in Iraq to one of moderator, persuader and occasional arm twister is not new, but it has taken on new urgency with the progression of the drawdown and the difficulties in establishing democratic principles in a country unfamiliar with them.
“We are coaching them, we are advising them, we are often a go-between,” said David Stewart, team leader of the US State Department’s 55-member provincial reconstruction group for Salahuddin Province, where Samarra is located. “Our goal is to be out of the picture.”
The military has also adopted a behind-the-scenes strategy in Samarra. They have established a 24-hour joint operation center with the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army where situational updates arrive in both Arabic and English.
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