Iraq's hopes lie in rubble of Golden Shrine
SAMARRA, Iraq -- The labour would be unpaid, but the rewards in Heaven would be guaranteed.
When Iraq's Shia religious leaders issued an appeal last summer for volunteers to help rebuild the bomb-damaged wreckage of Samarra's Golden Shrine, a task force of more than 3,000 people formed almost overnight.
Yet despite the massed show of willing hands, so far not a single tile of the distinctive gold-plated dome that once dominated the city's skyline has been put back in place.
It remains exactly as it was after last February's demolition job by Sunni insurgents -- a glaring, symbolic reminder of the orgy of sectarian violence that its destruction was intended to spark...
Everyone agrees that rebuilding the shrine would help rebuild Shia-Sunni relations, but so far the project, backed by both the Iraqi government and the United Nations, has slipped into the same sectarian faultlines that it is trying to bridge.
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When Iraq's Shia religious leaders issued an appeal last summer for volunteers to help rebuild the bomb-damaged wreckage of Samarra's Golden Shrine, a task force of more than 3,000 people formed almost overnight.
Yet despite the massed show of willing hands, so far not a single tile of the distinctive gold-plated dome that once dominated the city's skyline has been put back in place.
It remains exactly as it was after last February's demolition job by Sunni insurgents -- a glaring, symbolic reminder of the orgy of sectarian violence that its destruction was intended to spark...
Everyone agrees that rebuilding the shrine would help rebuild Shia-Sunni relations, but so far the project, backed by both the Iraqi government and the United Nations, has slipped into the same sectarian faultlines that it is trying to bridge.