Zaki Chehab – Published 12 February 2007

The clash between Sunni and Shia Muslims is the greatest cause of strife across the Arab world. Here – as part of our special issue on Islam – Zaki Chehab explains the deep-lying roots of the turmoil
 
Iraqis have already given it a name: the “Bloody Evening”. At about 5pm on Saturday 3 February, a Mercedes lorry carrying more than a tonne of explosives was detonated in the Sadriyah neighbourhood of Baghdad, killing 150 people and wounding 300 more. The suicide bomber had driven into a food market in a largely Shia area; the result was the greatest loss of life from a single bomb since the US invasion of 2003.

From weary experience, Iraqis know that it is only a matter of time before Shia militants seek revenge. While hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have sought refuge in neighbouring countries, the majority who cannot leave or cannot afford to leave are trapped in a cycle of sectarian killings that the religious and political leaderships of Shias and Sunnis alike have failed to arrest. Abbas, a Shia friend who left Baghdad recently, told me from his new base in Jordan that he had been forced to go – he had been unable to send his three children to school for fear they would fall victim to the Iraqi sectarian killings that are claiming the lives of a hundred people a day. He described the grisly scene with municipal trucks going out each morning to collect the bodies of those killed the previous night. Corpses found in plastic bags were evidence that the victims had been kidnapped and disposed of when no ransom was paid.

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