Religion and politics converge in march of a million Iraqi Shias

All day, they kept on coming. Flocks of hunched old women plodding along the dual carriageway in their stockinged feet, black chadors flapping wildly in the hot and dusty wind. Packs of gaunt and fiery-eyed young men striding under a canopy of green and black flags, bouncing to the rhythm of their own noisy chants. Saintly old men in white robes, limping bare-footed on the hot asphalt, resting from time to time to lean on their wooden staffs. Some marched along beating their chests; some carried babes in arms.

Sixty miles of dead-flat landscape separates Baghdad from Karbala. Yesterday the highway between them – a road not unlike the M4, but littered with wrecked Iraqi fighting vehicles – became an unbroken flow of people. They were walking south, a crowd of pilgrims so dense that they shut down half the carriageway to cars for miles on end.

A vast army of Iraqi Shia Muslims – and a few from neighbouring Iran, too – was on the move, pouring out of the towns and villages towards one of their holiest cities in a traditional annual march that was banned under Saddam Hussein. From Baghdad, the journey takes two days. But some of those who live further afield said they had been walking for five.

This was, first and foremost, a ritual, an act of self-sacrifice to mark the 40th day of mourning for the death of the prophet's grandson, Hussein, 1,323 years ago. This red letter day in the Shia calendar falls on Wednesday.

But it is an event that also has considerable political significance. Though this was primarily a religious event, the mass march – which will continue today – is a de facto show of strength by Iraq's Shia majority, ruthlessly suppressed under Saddam Hussein, and now eager to lay down their marker in the political vacuum of the chaotic and dangerous post-Saddam days. In Karbala the pilgrims find a city that is operating under the rule of the Shia elders, in what could be a blueprint for other cities across Iraq.

It could equally prove to be the start of an overwhelming problem for Washington and London as they try to establish an inclusive government among the Iraqi population, of which 60 per cent is Shia.

Since the war ended, the Shias have been quietly taking control of running Shia- dominated towns. This was another tacit reminder to the US that their community – whose aspirations bear little resemblance to Washington's hopes for the brave new world – must be taken into account.

There was little sign of gratitude from the walkers towards the Americans for sending in the occupation forces which overthrew the regime that oppressed them, banning the march and killing thousands of Shias over the years.

As the tide of people trudged down the southbound lane of Routes 8 and 9, an armoured snake of American army trucks and lorries carrying fuel, cranes and – intriguingly – motorboats, passed them by, heading north to the capital. No one waved. No one cheered. Less than two weeks after the "liberation" of the Shias, the American soldiers attracted only wary, curious stares.

So, too, did the uneasy handful of soldiers from the so-called Free Iraqi Forces who were guarding the road near Karbala. These are the men of Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile businessman wanted for fraud in Jordan, whom the Pentagon's hawks have been pushing as a possible new leader.

The post-Saddam confusion could hardly have been better illustrated: within a few miles the territory is controlled by the US military, with patrols by the exiles who form the little-loved Mr Chalabi's militia, and a city which is, in effect, run by the Shias.

The sun was barely up yesterday before Radhia Hassan Alwan, a tiny, shrivelled woman of 73, set off from her village to join the pilgrimage. So small and haggard is she that it was hard to imagine that she could manage even a mile of the great walk. Yet she had covered 20 miles, and professed to feeling perfectly well.

This was an historic moment for her. She said she had always made the annual pilgrimage but for the past three decades it was in secret, sneaking across the fields to avoid the regime's snoops and henchmen. She said she had been caught on several occasions by intelligence agents, who would beat and harass her. "I felt totally alone," she recalled, watching people stream down the road towards her. "Now I am very, very happy."

There were lots of stories like that yesterday. Ali Abdul Hussein al-Abzawi, a 30-year-old labourer, said he had walked 150 miles to get to Karbala over five days. He, too, claimed to have covertly made the pilgrimage for years – in his case, since 1994. "I used to creep through the fields. In the past we would be shot at, but now we are free."

At lunchtime in the central plaza of Karbala, a mass of people were recovering from the walk by browsing through the pavement stalls or sleeping under the colonnades – now selling previously banned books and pictures of respected Shia clerics. There were photos of the powerful Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali al-Sistani of Najaf, the widely respected scholar Professor Mohammed al-Wa'ali, and Ayatollah Mohammad Bakr al-Hakim, the pro-Iranian leader whose 30,000-strong militia is already running some border towns.

The city is now firmly in the control of the Shia elders. Last week a 10-man council was elected to help oversee the running of Karbala but it seemed clear that orders came down from the mosque.

The head imam in the city, Sheikh Abdul Mahdi al-Kerbali, chose his words carefully as he explained that people had been obeying the orders of their imams and the religious students. "You can see the co- operation we have had," he said. "The students have a good relationship with the people and they obey the orders of the students. The co-operation you can see in the streets of the city reflects that."

Plastered on the entrance of Karbala's two great gold-domed shrines – tombs of the Imam Hussein and his half-brother Abbas, seen as martyrs by Shias – were demands for the notoriously divided Muslims of Iraq to unite, a repeated theme on the streets. Placards carried by a few among the marching masses were equally explicit. "Yes, yes, to Islam. No, no to occupation," said one.

But the men in the cafés of Karbala are still smouldering over the American failure to support the Shia uprising of 1991. As they supped their tea, they went through the motions of expressing appreciation towards the Americans and British for toppling Saddam.

But the real emotion was reserved for George Bush, whose motives for invading Iraq are seen here as a starkly self-interested quest for oil. "We reject the occupation completely, said Riad al-Musawi, a 40-year-old baker. "They have promised to leave the country, but if they don't we will fight them with knives and stones. More even than the Palestinians."