To the utmost horror of Shi'ites everywhere - Arabs, Persians, South Asians etc.. - American tanks are now rumbling around Najaf and Karbala. If the conquest of Baghdad - the iconic seat of the Caliphate for 700 years - is bound to ignite fury in the Sunni Arab world, one shudders to imagine what would happen in the Shi'ite world if Najaf and Karbala were desecrated during the war or under American occupation.

Sheikh Mohamed al-Khakani, a top imam in Najaf, has in fact already called for a jihad: "Iraqis should defend their country, honour and religion by expelling the unbelievers from the land of Islam". This de facto defensive jihad goes a long way to explain why Shi'ites in southern Iraq are not welcoming the Anglo-American tanks with wine and roses, as had been widely expected.

Ayatollah Mohamed Baqr al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI) - the most important Iraqi Shi'ite opposition group, based in Tehran - has been no less explicit. He promised that his Badr Brigades - an army of 15,000 deployed partly in Iran and partly in Iraqi Kurdistan - will wage war against the Americans if they reveal themselves to be occupiers.

A Lebanese source confirms that about 700 Hezbollah warriors are already in Iraq. They are familiar with Najaf and Karbala, are in tune with the parallels being drawn across the Arab world between the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The Lebanese Shi'ites at the time received the Israelis as liberators. But when the Israelis revealed themselves as an occupying force, the Shi'ites turned on them.

Pentagon generals might think that once the Medina and Baghdad divisions are vanquished the game is over. But then there will be the siege of Baghdad - and Washington simply cannot afford to turn Baghdad into a Grozny or Jenin. By that time the British would have attacked and occupied Basra and the Americans defeated the stiff resistance of the paramilitary Fedayeen militias in the Shi'ite south. But the Sunni Fedayeen are not alone: they are getting help from Shi'ites who refuse to bow to a foreign occupying force.

"Arab nationalism" has been a kind of byword for a social contract lasting many decades in Iraq. The Shi'ites will have no more of it. But they cannot trust the Americans to free them. They view Washington as hostile to Shi'ite Iran, to the Shi'ites in Syria and Lebanon, and only interested in oil in Shi'ite southern Iraq and oil in the Shi'ite eastern province of Saudi Arabia. Moreover, Shi'ites - who consider themselves Iraqis first and foremost - still remember how Bush senior betrayed them in March 1991.

The city is in fact surrounded and cut off from the rest of the country. Najaf is a key communications centre. That's where the main supply route running along the Euphrates River from Nasreiyah and the port of Umm Qasr (to the east of the Euphrates river) meets another road (to the west). Najaf has an airport. And from Najaf, there are roads on both sides of the Euphrates getting to within 50 kilometres of Baghdad.

The Iraqi army's desperate plan is to cut the Americans' serpent line of communication along and across the Euphrates, and then isolate the extended American 5th Marine Corps. They don't stand much of a chance, though.

Inside Najaf, the resistance is organized by Saddam's Fedayeen, the ragtag al-Quds Liberation Army and Ba'ath Party officials. They all know there's no way out: they will die fighting. Nobody actually knows what's happening inside the city of 100,000 souls, built around the fabulous golden mosque where Imam Ali is buried.

Editor's note: The above article was published by Asia Times of Hong Kong of 27 March

Some phonetisation of names and editorial work are by IPS