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The ever-threatening Shi'ite
factor ...
By Hooman Peimani
Far from moving freely forward on the road to
freedom and democracy, post-Saddam Iraq is seemingly
heading towards conflicts and political uncertainty.
Added to the emerging elements of ethnic and political
strife in Iraq's northern part, its southern region,
with its large number of Shi'ites is becoming a scene
for a high-stakes rivalry among the major Shi'ite
contenders. The outcome of this struggle will have a
determining impact on the nature of the Iraqi political
system, given that Shi'ites account for 60 percent of
Iraq's population.
The main "battle ground" has
been the holy city of Najaf where the powerful Shi'ite
high clergy resides. The city broke into violence on
Sunday when an armed radical group, Jimaat-i-Sadr-Thani,
surrounded the residence of a leading Shi'ite cleric of
Iranian origin, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and ordered
him to leave Iraq within 48 hours. The violent group
members threatened to attack Sistani if he refused to
comply with their demand. Reportedly, he subsequently
left his surrounded residence for "a secret house".
Moqtada Sadr (al-Sadr), a 22-year-old cleric,
leads the Jimaat-i-Sadr-Thani. Sadr capitalizes on his
father's credentials as a high Shi'ite cleric opposing
the Saddam Hussein regime. Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr
and two of his sons were murdered in 1999, allegedly by
the Iraqi secret service. After a few years of hiding in
an unknown place, Moqtada Sadr reappeared in Najaf when
the American military captured the city.
Added
to the incident involving Sistani, last week's murders
in the holy Shrine of Imam Ali of Ayatollah Sayyed Abdul
Majid Khoei, a dissident clergy rushed back to Najaf
from exile in London as the American military captured
it, and another cleric, Haider al-Kilidar, have been
attributed to the Jimaat-i-Sadr-Thani. This group seems
to have begun a violent campaign to eliminate all
opponents in its bid to dominate the Shi'ite clergy and
to secure the leadership of all Iraqi Shi'ites.
A Kuwaiti-based cleric, Ayatollah Abulqasim
Dibaji, has referred to such a plan in his reaction to
the Sistani incident. Accordingly, "Moqtada wants to
take total control of the holy sites in Iraq" through
violence. As a result, "total terror [now] reigns in
Najaf".
In particular, Sistani's aides say that
Sadr is targeting those Shi'ite leaders with links to
neighboring Iran, whom Sadr, according to the aides,
seeks to remove from Najaf. Thus they claim that the
Jimaat-i-Sadr-Thani supporters went to the ayatollah's
house to tell him "leave Najaf because he [was] not
Arab". There are suggestions that another high clergy
with links to Iran, Sayyed Mohammad Said al-Hakim, has
become a target of the violent group. It is believed
that he has ties with the Iran-based Supreme Assembly of
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), led by Ayatollah
Mohammed Baqir Hakim.
If this is true, targeting
such clergy is a clear warning to the SAIRI and its
leader, who announced last week his decision to return
to Iraq after 23 years of exile in Iran. Founded in 1980
by the dissident Ayatollah Hakim, the SAIRI has emerged
as the largest organized Iraqi Shi'ite group opposing
Saddam's regime, with a significant well-trained
military wing, the Badr Corps. The group has conducted
anti-Saddam military operations inside Iraq since 1980.
It also played a major role in the 1991 uprising of
Iraqi Shi'ites, which the Saddam regime brutally
suppressed.
In the absence of other major
Shi'ite groups, religious or secular, with competing
credentials and organization, SAIRI has a good chance of
growing rapidly inside Iraq by filling the vacuum of
power in the post-Saddam era. Secular Shi'ite leaders
such as Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National
Congress (INI), do not seem to have much of a chance to
emerge as popular leaders, despite well-publicized
American backing. In fact, such backing serves as a
negative point in the eyes of many Iraqis who see him as
an American stooge.
The struggle for the
leadership of the Shi'ites is important as this grouping
can influence the form and the nature of the future
Iraqi regime. Thus, leading Shi'ite figures in Najaf
appear to be preparing for a fight among themselves not
only to achieve supremacy in that city, but also to
expand their influence elsewhere in the country. Being
systematically suppressed and marginalized by the Iraqi
regime representing the Arab Sunni minority constituting
30 percent of the Iraqis, the Shi'ites have clearly no
intention of accepting any inferior position in the
post-Saddam era.
On Sunday, the Najaf Howza, an
umbrella structure for leading Shi'ite clergy and their
seminaries, issued a directive, which was widely
distributed in Baghdad. It called on Baghdad's
approximately 2 million Shi'ites to organize themselves
through neighborhood committees to run all the affairs
of their own neighborhoods, including security in the
absence of a functioning authority. As reported, armed
Shi'ites now seek to restore security to Shi'ite
neighborhoods, while others aim at running local water
facilities and hospitals.
Against this
background, it is clear that all the powers, regional
and non-regional alike, with long term stakes in Iraq
should seek to have the Shi'ites on their side to secure
an influence in the country. So far, the
American-British bid towards that end has not been very
promising, as reflected in the murder of Khoei. The
London-based cleric with a clear positive attitude
towards Washington and London could have helped the
latter address their major handicap, a lack of
popularity among Shi'ites. On Tuesday, the SAIRI refused
to attend an American "tent" conference held beside the
ancient city of Ur outside Nasiriyah as a step for
establishing a pro-American government under the
leadership of a retired American general without regard
to the realities on the ground.
Being part of
the coalition of Iraqi opposition groups gathered in
London last December to found a post-Saddam political
system, the SAIRI has accepted the creation of a secular
coalition government, but it opposes an American puppet
government. While reflecting a genuine popular
resentment towards American interference in Iraq's
internal affairs, Tuesday's massive anti-American
demonstration by SAIRI supporters in Nasiriyah who
opposed the "tent" conference indicated that the power
struggle between Iran, the SAIRI's main regional
supporter, and the United States over the long-term
direction of Iraq has just started.
Dr
Hooman Peimani works as an independent consultant
with international organizations in Geneva and does
research in international relations.
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