First came the warning: a sheet of paper stuck to the door of Na'aman Khalil's shop ordering him to close his off-license. \n"You are corrupting the people of the Earth and you should stop," said the message, signed by a group calling itself the Monotheistic Movement of Jihad. \nFive days later, a parcel of and gutting the shop. Four other alcohol stores along the same street in Baghdad's largely Christian al-Ghadir district were bombed that same night. \nNo one was injured, but the message was clear. After the bombings and a spate of other attacks across Baghdad, most of the city's alcohol shops closed. \n"They have achieved their aim. Whatever they wanted, they have got it," said Khalil, 24, who says the bombing cost him 7 million dinars in destroyed stock. "If I open the shop again I don't know what action they would take. Probably they would kill me." \nThere have been no arrests, but police and many Iraqis blame the attacks and explosions on supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric. \nA few days before the warning letter arrived, several of al-Sadr's followers met around 30 Shiite tribal leaders in the al-Hekma mosque in Sadr City, the slum area in eastern Baghdad which forms the cleric's powerbase. \nThey produced an edict in which they listed nine crimes punishable by death. These included theft, kidnapping, robbery, spying "for the Wahabis, al-Qaeda and Saddamists," trafficking in women, and selling alcohol, pornographic CDs and drugs. \nThe edict, it states, was drawn up because of the "critical and sorrowful situation and lack of security and to serve the common good." Most of the tribal leaders who signed were from Amara, Kut and Nasiriyah, towns in southern Iraq where a Shiite uprising in April was strongest. \n"After the end of the dispute between our army and the Americans, our army is working on stability and controlling the looters and other violent groups," said Sheikh Raed al-Kadhimi, one of al-Sadr's aides in Baghdad. He boasted of a number of checkpoints and patrols in Sadr City, and said one had captured several hundred tonnes of stolen sugar, which he said were returned to the government. \nThe movement, made up largely of young, unemployed urban men, has easily moved into the power vacuum left by the absence of properly trained and equipped Iraqi police and security forces. \n"Neither the government nor the police are controlling the situation," said al-Kadhimi. "The al-Sadr tide is the only active tide in the country." \nMuch of the movement's strength is in its organization. The group has its own religious police, the al-Amur bil Ma'arouf, or Promotion of Virtue. \nThey have divided Baghdad into three areas: east, west and the central Kadhimiya area, home to the biggest Shiite shrine in the city. Each area has its own unit. In Kadhimiya it numbers around 40; in the eastern sector, around Sadr City, it is at least 100 according to Sayed Adnan al-Safi, an al-Sadr official and editor of one of the movement's newspapers. \n"In Kadhimiya we have minimized and controlled places where alcohol is sold. We have controlled the sale of immoral CDs and we have stopped fraud," said al-Safi. "People have begun to understand and are co-operating with us to control the general violence. We are not issuing any punishments ourselves, otherwise we would be considered a state within a state. We pass cases on to the police for punishment." \nThere is little doubt that the movement is about more than controlling crime. In the past week al-Sadr's followers have proselytized among Iraq's minority faiths. A group of them delivered a video of speeches by al-Sadr to the Armenian Orthodox church in Baghdad. A priest, who asked not to be named, said the speeches criticized the Christian faith. \n"We have been living in Iraq for 100 years and have never had a problem between Muslim and Christian," he said.
India yesterday summoned Canada’s high commissioner in India to “convey strong concern” over Sikh protesters in Canada and how they were allowed to breach the security of India’s diplomatic mission and consulates. Canadian media reported that hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Indian consulate in Vancouver on Saturday over demands for an independent Sikh state, a simmering issue for decades that was triggered again in the past few weeks. Canada has the highest population of Sikhs outside their home state of Punjab in India. “It is expected that the Canadian government will take all steps which are required to ensure the
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS: The US destroyer’s routine operations in the South China Sea would have ‘serious consequences,’ the defense ministry said China yesterday threatened “serious consequences” after the US Navy sailed a destroyer around the disputed Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) in the South China Sea for the second day in a row, in a move Beijing claimed was a breach of its sovereignty and security. The warning came amid growing tensions between China and the US in the region, as Washington pushes back at Beijing’s growingly assertive posture in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway it claims virtually in its entirety. On Thursday, after the US sailed the USS Milius guided-missile destroyer near the Paracel Islands, China said its navy and
The US Department of Justice on Friday unveiled spying charges against a Russian who, under a Brazilian alias, studied at a Washington university and then tried to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. The indictment of Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov said it would try to contest his extradition to Russia from Brazil, where he is jailed on identity fraud charges. Cherkasov, 39, was detained at the beginning of April last year by Dutch authorities for using fake identity papers. He arrived in the country as Viktor Muller Ferreira, a Brazilian, to take a position at the ICC as a junior analyst. The
The US military must be ready for possible confrontation with China, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Thursday, pushing the US Congress to approve the Pentagon’s proposed US$842 billion budget, which would modernize the force in Asia and around the world. “This is a strategy-driven budget — and one driven by the seriousness of our strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China,” Austin told the US House of Representations Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. Pointing to increases in new technology, such as hypersonics, Austin said the budget proposes to spend more than US$9 billion, a 40 percent increase over last
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