Witnessing an Iraqi Meltdown
Feb. 27, 2006 — -- Last Wednesday we woke to the news that the Al Askari shrine in Samarra had been bombed and its magnificent golden dome vanished. The 72,000 pieces of gold that made the dome had scattered to the ground.
The shrine holds the tombs of two important Shiite prophets, but it is in the middle of a predominantly Sunni town. For Iraqis, it meant that only Sunni extremists -- Takfereyeen as they call them here -- could have committed this crime.
The news spread like fire, and with it the anger of Shiites in Basra, Kut, Najaf, Baghdad -- every city in Iraq except those in the Kurdish north. They took to the streets calling for revenge. Militias roamed the streets toting their guns and Kalashnikovs. Sunnis were petrified and knew they would pay a heavy price for the attack done by a handful of extremists. The violence unfolded live on Iraqi TV. It was the 9/11 of the new Iraq, and no one knew what would happen next, but everybody knew things could become bad, really bad.
The entire day was full of news of killings, and by night no one could figure out how many people had died or how many mosques had been attacked. All we knew was that things had deteriorated badly and that a nightmare scenario for Iraq was unfolding.
Iraq was on the brink of civil war; I felt it in my guts. For the first time ever, I saw the fear on the faces of all the Iraqis who live and work with us in the ABC News bureau. By midafternoon the pressure from their families was too much -- wives and mothers implored them to get back home, and on their way back they stocked up on provisions.
Despite the daily violence and the deadly car bombs, they always said proudly that there would be no civil war in Iraq because Iraqis see no difference between Sunnis and Shiites, who intermarry and have always co-existed in peace. One Iraqi pointed out that his wife is Shiite while he is Sunni.
But this time it was different. The possibility of a civil war had become a reality. Now they discussed whether the country was already in a civil war, or not.
