TheGuardian: War of the mosques is shattering Iraq's hopes

Peter Beaumont reports from Baghdad that the gunmen are finally succeeding in pushing the sectarian tension between Shia and Sunni towards the final abyss of all-out civil war

Sunday June 26, 2005
The Observer

When they killed Abdul Sattar Saffar al-Khazraji, he was waiting for the minibus that would take him to his work as a laboratory supervisor at Nahrain University.

At 8am, as the 30-year-old stood with other workers commuting from the Harriya district of Baghdad, two Opel cars sped up and blocked the road either side of him.

Two men on a motorbike roared into the gap left by the cars. The passenger fired at Abdul Sattar with a pistol as they approached, wounding him in the shoulder. As he collapsed in pain, the gunman delivered the coup de grce, putting a bullet into his head.

In a city where assassination is commonplace, one more killing goes unremarked. Yet Abdul Sattar's death is a reminder of Iraq's most critical question: whether, after two years of insurgency, the bombers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and their allies are succeeding in a central aim - pushing a bruised population towards civil conflict.

For the significance of Abdul Sattar was his religion. He was a Sunni. His crime, friends say, was that he was pious and visible, a community leader well known for his involvement in charity and other religious works.

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Semper Fi

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