“We have 25,000 volunteers who have filled in the forms and given their passports and are ready to go any moment. Another hundred thousand have got in touch with us and have pledged their support. We are looking at a million volunteers to form a human chain around the holy shrines of Karbala and Najaf, in case the Isis attacks. We will do everything to stop the advance of the enemies”, said Syed Bilal, spokesman of Anjuman-e-Haideri which protects Delhi's own ‘Karbala' shrine.
“The volunteers are educated young men from different backgrounds. We do not plan to train them in arms. We will go there to fight them bare handed”, he added.
Shabbir Hussian, a Shia masters student in Delhi, said he was ready to join the battle immediately. “We are ready to die and kill for our holy shrines. We won't allow the desecration of our religious places”, he said.
The group wants to defend shrines spread across Iraq in the cities of Karbala, Najaf, Samarra and Kirkuk, but also stem the rise of crude oil prices that have shot up as a result of the crisis and could hit importer India hard.
The drive to lure protagonists from each side of the rift in Islam, including Iraq's Shia Mahdi Army fighters returning from Syria, highlights the potential for the conflict to become the biggest Sunni-Shia sectarian battle since Saddam Hussein's forces invaded Ayatollah Khomeini's Shia revolution in Iran in 1980.
