US: Iraq Government Almost Out Of Time
Sniper attacks on a Shiite religious procession killed 10 pilgrims and injured 43 in Baghdad on Sunday. Four suspected gunmen were shot dead by police, officials said.
But in an exclusive interview with CBS News, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said he sees a perverse sort of progress.
"I see indications that both sides believe that a balance of terror has been established," Khalilzad told CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann. "They have demonstrated to each other that they can inflict pain on each other, and neither can get rid of the other."
That "balance of terror" led to record levels of violence in Iraq last month – with nearly 3500 Iraqis dying violently – and that was a trend that continued Saturday.
The U.S. military said an American soldier was killed in Anbar province – a stronghold of Sunni Arab insurgency.
Nine people, including two college professors, were killed in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad.
Elsewhere, four Iraqi soldiers died in a roadside bombing and five other people were killed in scattered violence.
The fighting continues despite a major U.S.-Iraqi security operation in Baghdad aimed at curbing Sunni-Shiite violence.
Nearly 12,000 U.S. and Iraqi troop reinforcements are coming in to take control of the city of 6 million people neighborhood by neighborhood.
The sustained killing threatens the stability of the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's fragile government of national unity.
Khalilzad said Maliki may be running out of time to change course.
"I think he has another three or four months to reverse this most important issue, the sectarian violence," he said.
The U.S. ambassador does see one government that is working in Iraq.
"There are Iranian agents in this country," he told Strassmann. "What I mean is that there are people from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards – 'Parasan' as they call it. There are people associated with Iran's intelligence agency."
In other developments:
The violence also comes as thousands of pilgrims gathered in Baghdad to mark the death of a Shiite saint.
Maliki urged Iraqis to cooperate with security forces during the ceremonies marking the death in 799 of Imam Moussa ibn Jaafar al-Kadhim, one of 12 Shiite saints.
The imam is buried in a golden-domed shrine in north Baghdad's Kazimiyah district.
Tens of thousands more Shiites were expected to visit the shrine on Sunday, when the ceremonies peak. Fearing an attack among the pilgrims, the government banned all private vehicles on the streets from Friday night until Monday morning. Soldiers, police and Shiite volunteers threw a security cordon around the shrine, frisking pilgrims as they arrived.
Mindful of Sunni-Shiite tensions, al-Maliki, a Shiite, warned against turning the ceremonies into a political demonstration, calling on clerics to urge people to unite and "shun whatever could lead to sectarian fights."
"We warn all those who use podiums (in mosques) to incite sectarian violence that they will be prosecuted as terrorists," he said in a statement, without elaboration.
Shiites from across the country began arriving at the shrine on Friday night on foot. Late Friday, gunmen opened fire on a group of pilgrims walking through the mostly Sunni Adil neighborhood in western Baghdad, killing seven of them.
Three mortars landed in Kazimiyah district late Saturday — two in a river and one on a school compound — but caused no casualties.
Last year, the government said about 1,000 people died during the Imam Kadhim commemoration when rumors of suicide bombers triggered a mass stampede on a bridge across the Tigris River. It was the biggest single day death toll since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
"Last year I was on the bridge and I fell into the water but that gave me the power to come back. I challenge the terrorists now that I have come to visit the imam," said Rahim al-Rubaie, 29.
Shiites were prevented from mustering huge crowds at religious ceremonies during Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime. But since Saddam's ouster in 2003, Shiite politicians and religious leaders have encouraged huge turnouts as a demonstration of the majority sect's power.
As the pilgrims arrived under the blistering summer heat, volunteers handed out orange drinks and free food. Many of the pilgrims waved the green flag of Islam or flags of their tribes, and some were cloaked in white robes, a symbol of their willingness to die.
"My cousins died here last year so I have come this year and I wish to die to be martyr and join my cousins in the paradise " said Ali al-Saedi, a 20-year-old college student.
Because of the vehicle ban, no cars and very few people were seen on the streets except police and army vehicle patrols. But the area around the shrine in Kazimiyah bustled with activity.
A government statement said it was "absolutely forbidden" to carry weapons, cell phones and any type of bags, even plastic ones into the shrine.