The bomb attacks today in Baghdad and Karbala were timed to coincide with the end of the Shiite Muslim day of mourning known as Ashore (explanation available here). Some form of terrorism was anticipated, especially following the bloody attack on the Imam Ali shrine in Naiad in August 2003. Security is difficult to maintain at such events, no matter how obvious a terrorist target they may be. The crowds during Ashore are large. An estimated five million pilgrims were expected to come to attend the festival from Iran alone, while thousands of other pilgrims have come from countries such as Lebanon and Pakistan.
There was a similar attack, probably by Sunni Muslim extremists, on Pakistani Shia Muslims in the city of Quetta on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border (story here) Sunni extremists in Quetta are sheltering a number of al Qaeda and Taliban members who fled the U.S. liberation of Afghanistan in 2001.
The attacks in Baghdad and Kerbala are part of a strategy being followed by the al Qaeda terrorists and their allies among the former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Unable to successfully inflict large scale U.S. casualties, one only sees U.S. soldiers infrequently and in small numbers, the terrorists are instead aiming for the base of U.S. support: the Shia and the Kurds. Iraqi Kurdistan is still in mourning from the terrorist attack that killed 118 persons in Erbil on February 1, 2004 and the authorities here in Sulaimani have tightened security in anticipation of a possible attack in the city. A Kurdistan-wide demonstration planned by the Kurdish referendum movement, which has assembled 1.5 million signatures seeking a vote on whether Kurdistan should be independent, was cancelled because security could not be assured.
The terrorists’ hatred for the Shia and the Kurds was outlined in a letter sent by terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (full text available in English here) that was captured in January 2004. Hassan Ghul, an associate of Zarqawi, was detained by Kurdish forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan as he attempted to leave Iraq and enter Iran. Kurdish intelligence discovered that Ghul had a CD-ROM in his possession with an unsigned letter in Arabic addresses to unnamed terrorist leaders. The assumption is that Zarqawi was the author and that the letter was destined ultimately for Osama bin Laden. In the letter, Zarqawi had called the Iraqi Shia Muslims “an insurmountable obstacle, a lurking snake”. According to Zarqawi, Shiism is “the looming danger and the true challenge.” Today, Zarqawi was true to his word.