The Vietnamese have the Tet celebration. The Shi’ites of Iraq have Ashura. Ashura commemorates the death of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the prophet Mohammed. It occurs each year on the 10th day of Muharram, which happens to be this Monday.

Husayn was killed in the Battle of Karbala.

On 7th Muharram, 61 AH (October 6th, 680 CE), Yazid’s forces surrounded the traveling group of Husayn ibn Ali and cut-off their access to food and water. Husayn’s group had many women and children as well, including Husayn’s own 6-months old son. For three days in the heat of Iraqi desert, these men, women & children were made to suffer the thirst and hunger before they were brutally slaughtered on the deserts of Karbala.

Battle of Karbala, has significance in Islamic History for many reasons but mostly for the stories of courage and sacrifice that were displayed by prophet Muhammad family & friends in facing a powerful tyrant Yazid.

On Ashura, Shi’ites concentrate on the suffering of Husayn in a way that has parallels to the Good Friday services in Christianity. Husayn is revered by both Sunnis and Shi’ites, but the Shi’ites consider Husayn the third Imam, while the Sunnis merely consider him the grandson of Mohammed and a great man. It’s a lot more complicated than this and if you are really interested in the theology you can follow the links. What is significant today is that Ashura is here. Saddam Hussein did not allow the Shi’ites to celebrate Ashura, but it is now open to all Shi’ites from all over the world. The focus of the celebration is, not surprisingly, in the town of Karbala.

And a huge battle broke out near Karbala yesterday. In fact, over 250 people were killed in a major battle that included tanks, helicopters, Iraqi army forces, and Americans. What is not clear yet is who the enemy was. On the one hand, you have the word of the governor of Najaf province.

Asad Abu Ghalal, the governor of Najaf Province, said the fighters in the orchard were Iraqi and foreign, some wearing the brown, white and maroon regalia of Pakistani and Afghan fighters. He said they had come to assassinate Shiite clerics and attack religious convoys that were gathering in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam’s holiest cities, and other southern cities for Ashura, a Shiite holiday that starts Monday night and runs through Tuesday morning.

These would obviously be Sunni terrorists looking to disrupt Ashura. But then we have the following totally contradictory account.

But two senior Shiite clerics said the gunmen were part of a Shiite splinter group that Saddam Hussein helped build in the 1990s to compete with followers of the venerated religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They said the group, calling itself the Mehwadiya, was loyal to Ahmad bin al-Hassan al-Basri, an Iraqi cleric who had a falling out with Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr — father-in-law of the Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr — in Hawza, a revered Shiite seminary in Najaf.

The clerics spoke on condition of anonymity because they said they had been ordered not to discuss Shiite divisions.

So, either U.S. forces just helped kill 250 Sunni extremists or they just helped kill one faction of Shiites that were fighting the more mainstream factions. What’s the truth of the matter? It’s hard to say. But it does look like a small army gathered in an orchard near Karbala and were preparing to launch a sort of ‘Karbala offensive’ that might have been reminiscent of the ‘Tet offensive’ of the Vietnam War.

Ashura celebrations have coincided with important events before, including during the Iranian Revolution, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Lebanese civil war, and the uprisings against Sadddam in the early nineties.

Be prepared for some eventful activities today and in the days that follow.