NAJAF: Yasser Thaferi, a young Shia militiaman brandishing an AK-47 rifle on the steps of the Imam Ali mosque in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf boasts about his peoples’ power to shake America.

“Our beliefs terrify the world...If the Shias turn to fight the occupiers then American tanks cannot stay for long in Iraq,” said Thaferi, standing near the tomb of the spiritual leader venerated by Iraq’s majority Muslim group.

But Thaferi’s Shia leaders, hoping that future elections will enshrine their demographic dominance after years of marginalization, are giving the Americans a chance — for now.

While the US-led authority is focused on guerrilla resistance in the Sunni heartland north and west of Baghdad, Shias have already won power through local councils that run many aspects of everyday Iraqi life.

Some feel indebted to the United States for their deliverance from years of oppression under Saddam Hussein.

“America is our father protector,” said Sheikh Abbas Khazem in the Sayed Idris mosque in Baghdad’s Karada neighbourhood.

Khazem, reflecting the sentiment of ordinary Shias who say Saddam’s rule could have never ended without US military might, hopes his fellow Iraqis would never resort to fighting the army of occupation.

But there is also a radical element among Iraq’s 60 per cent Shia population whose anti-American voices will become stronger if Washington fails to deliver quick results.

SIDING WITH THE INVADERS: In the history of Western conquests of Iraq, this is the first time Shias have sided with the invaders. Their leaders were in the forefront of the nationalist struggle against British colonialism at the turn of the 20th century.

“We welcomed the Americans because they saved us from Saddam and when their mission is over we will bid them farewell and work towards setting up our state,” said Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum, a religious leader and member of the US-backed administration who suspended his membership to protest against Ayatollah Baqer al-Hakim’s assassination.

Shias are now practicing their rituals in public for the first time in many years.

Across southern Iraq, they stare transfixed at television screens showing videos of preachers extolling Imam Ali. The preaching evokes a collective sense of persecution which has lasted to the present day.

“For a period of time under Saddam we had been buried alive,” said Seyed Mohammad Hussein Hakim, a prominent Najaf leader.

Persecution under Saddam’s government reached a height in the Shia uprising which followed the 1991 Gulf War which was brutally crushed, killing thousands.

Now US policy-makers are trying to balance Shia aspirations with those of Sunnis, whose support is a necessary ingredient of a stable Iraq.

GROWING RESENTMENT: Some radical Shia activists have begun to grumble about the US-appointed Governing Council whose 25-strong membership reflects exactly the religious and ethnic composition of Iraq.

Shia elders have also criticized what they say is the failure of US forces to bring security to Iraq.

After a spate of assassinations of their leaders blamed on Saddam loyalists, they have called for a strengthening of their own militias.

Unruly militias run by some of the more radicals such as the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, a fiery leader with a large following among the poor Shia slums of Baghdad, have already hinted at armed resistance against US occupiers.

“Our ideology is against America,” said one Shia man after Friday prayers when worshippers chanted slogans against both Saddam and the United States. “At the right moment we will fight them.”—Reuters