Even by the standards of Iraq, where incidents of gory violence have become a daily routine, what happened on Wednesday at a Shia shrine in Baghdad, during celebrations marking the martyrdom of a revered religious figure, was a colossal tragedy. Nearly 1000 people are believed to have been crushed to death or drowned in the River Tigris while another 465 received injuries as they tried to escape a possible suicide bombing in a state of panic.
According to reports, first the place was hit by three separate mortar attacks, which killed seven people and injured several others. By then 25 people had already died by eating food 'purposely' poisoned. Clearly, it was all a well-planned operation which sought first to create general fear through mortar attacks and poison killings, and then went on to cause a stampede by spreading the rumour that a suicide bomber was about to blow himself up.
And as intended, people panicked and started running towards safety; but ended up getting trampled to death or drowned after falling into the river below.
The obvious question is who would want to produce such horror at a sectarian celebration? Or still more importantly, who would have a motive to cause so much pain to the country's Shia population? It would be tempting for many to point an accusatory finger at the Sunnis since they are the ones leading the insurgency against American occupation, and they are also locked in a fight with the Shia and Kurd leadership over constitutional issues.
Interestingly, a group supposedly linked to al Qaeda, calling itself Jaish al-Taifa al Mansoura, is said to have claimed responsibility for the attack "to punish the genocide committed against Sunnis." If the claim is to be believed the country is headed towards a civil war and its eventual break-up into three independent entities.
But so far, except for some seemingly inspired Western sources, no one from the Sunni or Shia communities has shown an inclination to move in that direction.
A closer examination of the Sunni vs the Shia and Kurd fight over certain provisions of the draft constitution helps clarify the matter. At the centre of this fight is the federal character of the proposed political set-up. The Sunnis are against a federal structure since it would mean the domination of Kurds and Shias.
The oil-rich northern and southern parts of the country would control oil revenues, and the Sunni minority - the country's longtime ruling elite - would have little economic resources to fall back on. The Sunnis, therefore, it is plain, have a greater stake in maintaining the unity of the country than either of the other two communities. If a federal structure is unacceptable to them, certainly they would be the last ones to seek the break-up of the country along sectarian/ethnic lines.
Which is why according to latest reports, despite their deep differences over the draft constitution, Sunni leaders are said to be mobilising their community to strike alliances across the sectarian divide. Notably, the radical Shia leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, whose main support base is located in Baghdad's Sadr City neighbourhood, too, has rejected the proposed federal structure for the country.
Also not without significance is Iran's reaction to the horrific tragedy. According to it, "suspicious hands are involved in conspiracies to incite violence and bloodshed among the different Iraqi groups and tribes." Though it did not name any names, it does not take much imagination to figure out as to who may want to set different Iraqi groups against one another to further its own interests in that unfortunate country.
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