Pilgrimage, protest and suppression in Iraq

The “black anaconda” is how Iraqis describe the millions of black-clad pilgrims marching towards the holy city of Karbala every year. Even from above, it is impossible to capture the scale of the mass movement, for what is the largest annual gathering of people on earth.

Arba’een, the Arabic word for 40, marks the end of the mourning period for Imam Hussein, one of the prophet Muhammad’s grandchildren, who was slain at the battle of Karbala in 680 AD.

This year's pilgrimage drew 15,339,955 mostly Shi'a Muslims, six times the number of Muslim pilgrims to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, yet the bigger event in Iraq remains relatively unknown.

Families, communities and tribes walk together carrying flags and banners. Whole towns and cities join columns of troubadours chanting poetry over ghetto blasters while organised groups perform synchronistic mourning rituals by beating themselves on the head and chest.

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Many of the pilgrims carry little more than the clothes on their backs but “nobody goes hungry in Karbala,” as the saying goes. All of the routes into the city are lined with people providing free food and services, including volunteer doctors and dentists who usually work for the UK’s National Health Service.

Three brothers from Basra, in southern Iraq, rent a shop in the city each year to give out free – and tasty – falafel sandwiches all day. One of the larger tents on the outskirts of the city provides two breakfasts, two lunches and two dinners for the endless streams of pilgrims passing on their way to Karbala each day. The rich Bahraini businessmen funding the tent say they purchased two tonnes of chicken for 10 days.

Most people spend about three days walking 75km from Najaf, Iraq's other holy city, to Karbala or two days walking about 50km from Baghdad. Some spend up to two weeks walking the much longer 500km route from Basra.

On their approach to the holy shrines in Karbala, adult men and women are overborne by emotion, crying for Hussein, as one might for someone one knew personally. Some of the teenage boys who beat themselves on the head and chest appear to knock themselves unconscious in what’s regarded as a show of masculinity in front of their friends, a feature of the tribal cultures of southern Iraq.

There are pilgrims from Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Kashmir, the former Soviet Bloc countries, Europe, North America, Africa and across the Middle East. There are representatives from countries where the Shi’a population must number in the hundreds. The vast majority of pilgrims are Iraqi, with a record number of Iranians given cheap Iraqi visas.

Nahi Ali, a talented engineer and photographer from the Gulf state of Bahrain, walked to Karbala as a younger man in 1989 at a time when Saddam's forces arrested and tortured anybody caught participating. Saddam banned Arba'een, as part of his suppression of Iraq's majority Shi'a population.

Defining moment

Pilgrims walked at night, along dirt roads and under the false premise that they were visiting local friends. There were only a few thousand in attendance but the ceremony still took place.

After Saddam, the Shi’a came to power in an Arab country for the first time in 800 years.

Secretary general of the Imam Hussein Shrine in Karbala, Afdal al Shami, told The Irish Times that Arba’een was the strength of the Shi’a and they have never been afraid to show it.

The Shi’a see the slaying of Imam Hussein, who rebelled against the tyrant of his day, as the defining moment in their tradition. It also cemented the fundamental split between the two Islamic sects, as the Shi’a believed Muhammad’s direct descendants were rightful heirs to the caliphate, while Sunnis believed Muhammad’s closest companions were rightful heirs.

Hussein and his family top a long line of martyrs in the Hi’a tradition. Rows of lampposts at various points along the routes into Karbala are lined with the portraits of soldiers and civilians killed by the Islamic State group (Isis) or Al Qaeda.

Pilgrims themselves have become martyrs while walking. In 2004, more than 140 people were killed in a series of Al Qaeda bombings in Baghdad and Karbala. The following year, 965 pilgrims were killed in a stampede on a bridge over the river Tigris, due to a false panic over suicide bombers.

This year’s pilgrimage occurred during one of the most significant moments for Iraq’s “democratic project” since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

A week earlier, dozens of anti-corruption protesters were shot in Iraq by snipers believed to be from Iranian-backed militias. The protests have erupted spontaneously across the South of the country against the corruption that has riddled Iraq since 2003. Fatalities among protesters now number more than 320, including several deaths in Karbala.

Few Iraqis have seen any benefit from the country’s oil wealth, despite being one of world’s top producers, and young Iraqis have taken to the streets calling for radical change. The problem for the protesters is that their demands can never be met by a broken system, and those in power are eager to crush them.

On the Friday night of commemorations, as Arba’een reached its climax, a Shi’a militia group led by Abu Alaa al-Walai, paraded through the two holy shrines in Karbala.

Spiritual leader

Al-Walai was part of the “crisis cell” of Iranian advisers in Baghdad that encouraged a brutal response to the protests, according to Michael Knights, senior fellow of the Washington Institute.

They are part of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), an umbrella organisation of mostly Shi’a militia groups known as the Hashd al Shaabi. Their deputy leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who has close ties to Iran, recently called the protests a foreign conspiracy by the US and Israel to destabilise Iraq.

Muhandis warned that the PMF was willing to intervene to defend the Iraqi government “at the right time”, but it is unclear how many of the various armed groups would follow such orders. At the same time, another prominent PMF leader, who supports the government, cautioned against an internal split within the Shi’a militias. If that were to happen, “there won’t be heads on anybody’s body”, he said.

You might find something here that you will never find in Europe

The spiritual leader of the Iraqi Shi’a, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, appears to be on the side of the protesters. The 89-year-old’s weekly sermon, which holds significant sway in the corridors of power, is usually delivered by his aide, Ahmed al-Safi, in Karbala every Friday.

Speaking to The Irish Times shortly after delivering his Friday sermon during Arba’een, Sistani’s representative al-Safi would not talk about the current political situation in Baghdad. Sistani’s closest aides are wary of speaking about politics publicly.

Al-Safi does, however, say that the most important part of Arba’een was understanding the power of Imam Hussein and the decision he made 1,400 years ago to rebel against the tyrant of his day.

He says Hussein did not “rise up to seek leadership, corruption or oppression but he rose up to save the nation of his grandfather, the prophet Muhammad”. He says Hussein was a man of major “reform”.

Al-Safi says restrictions on the internet in Iraq are nothing to do with the Shi’a religious authorities but a decision of the government to “affect the behaviour of the protestors” and “control the crowd”.

He praises the participants in the pilgrimage, from the very young to the very old, as well as the people who provide free services for pilgrims along the way.

“You will have noticed with your own eyes how big this is. All of the services along the way are free, without discrimination. Iraqis and non-Iraqis, Muslims and non-Muslims, all foreigners are welcome here.”

Family links

“You might find something here which you will never find in Europe. We think the links between the people are stronger here than in Europe, our family links especially. We don’t blame the Europeans because everybody in Europe is busy with stress, life is more materialistic and people spend most of their time at work. So we hope that Europe will take this [Arba’een] from us,” al-Safi says with a wry smile on his face.

Munira Subasic, the president of the Mothers of Srebrenica group, which represents survivors of the 1995 genocide, visited Arba’een for the first time this year along with a group of other Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Next year is the 20th anniversary of the murder of almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the former Yugoslavia by Bosnian Serbs.

People who decide someone's fate, politicians and warlords, they should talk for 100 years before they start more wars

“Something that happened 1,400 years ago [to Hussein and his family] happened to us at the end of the 20th century,” says Munira, whose son Nermin was killed at Srebrenica.

“Every mother who loses her child, no matter what religion she is, what race, what colour, she doesn’t need something like this [Arba’een] to remind her of the loss. If you lose loved ones, you are always thinking about them, while you’re sleeping and awake.”

Munira said she was struck by the emotional outpouring for an event that occurred 1,400 years ago and urged local people to think more about victims of recent troubles.

“People who decide someone’s fate, politicians and warlords, they should talk for 100 years before they start more wars. They should not start wars.”