War's Full Fury Is Suddenly Everywhere: "The atmosphere in Iraq has completely changed. In just a week, a fading guerrilla war has exploded into a popular uprising. 'Six months of work is completely gone,'' said a State Department official working in southern Iraq. 'There is nothing to show for it.''
It was as if the clock had been set back to the early days of occupation. Again tanks are blasting apart targets in Baghdad neighborhoods. Cities like Falluja and Ramadi are under siege or, more accurately, re-siege.
But there is a difference. Back then, last April, when I was a reporter embedded with the United States Army, Iraq seemed as if it was slowly coming under control. Now, after three months on my current stint here, that nascent sense of order is collapsing into chaos.
... Why now?
two things happened - clear in retrospect - that helped unravel what little hope was here.
The first was hundreds of miles away. On March 22, in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces assassinated Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas and a hero to Palestinians. Outraged Arabs hit the streets in Baghdad and other Middle Eastern capitals. Many Americans in Iraq braced for reprisals.
A few days after Sheik Yassin was killed, American authorities shut down the Hawza newspaper, the mouthpiece of Moktada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric. The paper had been accused of printing lies. But closing it only played into Mr. Sadr's hand, fueling huge protests by his followers.
Then Falluja happened. The group that took responsibility said it was avenging Sheik Yassin.
The sheik's ghost returned to Iraq once more, on April 2, when Mr. Sadr announced that he was opening the Iraqi chapters of Hezbollah and Hamas, pro-Palestinian groups responsible for attacks on Israel.
The next day American authorities announced arrest warrants for several of Mr. Sadr's followers. His was soon to follow. Last Sunday, Iraq erupted. Mr. Sadr ordered his followers to take over government offices in Shiite areas across the country. In just days, the fighting pulled in thousands of people who weren't fighters before, and who took on a new identity. Until then, the insurgency had been a mysterious force behind a red and white checkered scarf. It had no uniform, no ideology, no face.
But Mr. Sadr provided that. Posters of him are everywhere now, even in Sunni strongholds like Falluja, something unthinkable before this crisis."
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