Nightmare Iraq Scenarios for the Bush
Administration
by Dilip Hiro
This article was originally published in TomDispatch.com.
"The prospect of Sadr's appeal extending to a section of
the Sunni community is the nightmare scenario that the Bush administration most
dreads."
Public opinion polls are valuable chips to play for those
engaged in a debate of national or international consequence. In the end,
however, they are abstract numbers. It is popular demonstrations which give
them substance, color, and - above all - wide media exposure, and make them
truly meaningful. This is particularly true when such marches are peaceful and
disciplined in a war-ravaged country like Iraq.
This indeed was the case with the demonstration on April 9
in Najaf. Over a million Iraqis, holding aloft thousands of national flags,
marched, chanting, "Yes, yes, Iraq/No, no, America" and "No, no,
American/Leave, leave occupier."
The demonstrators arrived from all over the country in response
to a call by Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, to demand an end to
foreign occupation on the fourth anniversary of the end of Baathist rule in
Baghdad.
"Over a million Iraqis, holding aloft thousands of
national flags, marched, chanting, âYes, yes, Iraq/No, no, America.'"
Both the size of the demonstration and its composition were
unprecedented. "There are people here from all different parties and
sects," Hadhim al-Araji, Sadr's representative in Baghdad's Kadhimiya
district, told reporters. "We are all carrying the national flag, a symbol
of unity. And we are all united in calling for the withdrawal of the
Americans."
The presence of many senior Sunni clerics at the head of the
march, which started from Sadr's mosque in Kufa, a nearby town, and the absence
of any sectarian flags or images in the parade, underlined the ecumenical
nature of the protest.
Crucially, the mammoth demonstration reflected the view
prevalent among Iraqi lawmakers. Last autumn, 170 of them in a 275-member Parliament,
signed a motion, demanding to know the date of a future American withdrawal.
The discomfited government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki played a
procedural trick by referring the subject to a parliamentary committee, thereby
buying time.
Opinion polls conducted since then show three-quarters of
Iraqi respondents demanding the withdrawal of the Anglo-American troops within
six to twelve months.
What Makes Sadr Tick?
Though in his early thirties and only a hojatalislam
("proof of Islam") - one rank below an ayatollah in the Shiite
religious hierarchy - Muqtada al-Sadr has pursued a political strategy no other
Iraqi politician can match.
The sources of his ever-expanding appeal are: his pedigree,
his fierce nationalism, his shrewd sense of when to confront the occupying
power and when to lie low, and his adherence to the hierarchical order of the
Shiite sect, topped by a grand ayatollah - at present 73-year-old Ali Sistani -
whose opinion or decree must be accepted by all those below him. (For his part,
Sistani does not criticize any Shiite leader.)
Muqtada's father, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr,
and two elder brothers were assassinated outside a mosque in Najaf in February
1999 by the henchmen of President Saddam Hussein. The Grand Ayatollah had
defied Saddam by issuing a religious decree calling on Shiites to attend Friday
prayers in mosques. The Iraqi dictator, paranoid about large Shiite gatherings,
feared these would suddenly turn violently anti-regime.
"Sadr consistently opposed the continuing occupation of
his country by Anglo-American forces."
Muqtada then went underground - just as he did recently in
the face of the Bush administration's "surge" plan - resurfacing only
after the Baathist regime fell in April 2003; and Saddam City, the vast slum of
Baghdad, with nearly 2 million Shiite residents, was renamed Sadr City. As the
surviving son of the martyred family of a grand ayatollah, Muqtada was lauded
by most Shiites.
While welcoming the demise of the Baathist regime, Sadr consistently
opposed the continuing occupation of his country by Anglo-American forces. When
Paul Bremer, the American viceroy in Iraq, banned his magazine Al Hawza al
Natiqa ("The Vocal Seminary") in April 2004 and American soldiers
fired on his followers protesting peacefully against the publication's closure,
Sadr called for "armed resistance" to the occupiers.
Uprisings spread from Sadr City to the southern Iraqi holy
cities of Najaf and Karbala as well as four other cities to the south. More
than 540 civilians died in the resulting battles and skirmishes. Since the
American forces were then also battling Sunni insurgents in Falluja, Bremer let
the ban on the magazine lapse and dropped his plan to arrest Sadr.
Later, Sadr fell in line with the wishes of Grand Ayatollah
Ali Sistani to see all Shiite religious groups gather under one umbrella to
contest the upcoming parliamentary election. His faction allied with two other
Shiite religious parties - the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (SCIRI) and Al Daawa al Islamiya (the Islamic Call) - to form the United
Iraqi Alliance (UIA).
By so doing, in the face of American hostility, Sadr gave
protective political cover to his faction and its armed wing, called the Mahdi
Army. (U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington have long viewed Sadr and his
militia as the greatest threat to American interests in Iraq.) Of the 38
ministers in Maliki's cabinet, six belong to the Sadrist group.
When the Pentagon mounted its latest security plan for
Baghdad on February 13 - aiming to crush both the Sunni insurgents and Shiite
militias - Sadr considered discretion the better part of valor. He ordered his
Mahdi militiamen to get off the streets and hide their weapons. For the moment,
they were not to resist American forays into Shiite neighborhoods. He then went
incommunicado.
Muqtada's decision to avoid bloodshed won plaudits not only
from Iraqi politicians but also, discreetly, from Sistani, who decries
violence, and whose commitment to bringing about the end of the foreign
occupation of Iraq is as strong as Sadr's - albeit not as vocal.
In a message to the nation, on the eve of the fourth
anniversary of the demise of Saddam's Baathist regime, Sadr coupled his order
to the Mahdi fighters to intensify their campaign to expel the Anglo-American
troops with a call to the Iraqi security forces to join the struggle to defeat
"the arch enemy - America." He urged them to cease targeting Iraqis
and direct their anger at the occupiers.
It was the Mahdi Army - controlling the shrine of Imam Ali,
the founder of Shiite Islam, in the holy city of Najaf - that battled the
American troops to a standstill in August 2004. The impasse lasted a fortnight,
during which large parts of Najaf's old city were reduced to rubble, with the
government of the U.S.-appointed Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, favorite Iraqi
exile of the CIA and the State Department as well as leader of the exiled Iraqi
National Accord, failing to defuse it.
By contrast, it took Sistani - freshly back in Najaf, his
home base, from London after eye surgery - a single session with Sadr over
dinner to resolve the crisis. A compromise emerged. The Mahdi army ceded
control of the holy shrine not to the Americans or their Iraqi cohorts but to
Sistani's representatives, and both Mahdi militiamen and U.S. troops left the
city.
The Towering Sistani
Ali Sistani established his nationalist credentials early
on. As the invading American forces neared Najaf on March 25, 2003, he issued a
religious decree requiring all Muslims to resist the invading
"infidel" troops. Once the Anglo-American forces occupied Iraq, he
adamantly refused to meet American or British officials or their emissaries,
and continues to do so to this day.
In January 2004, when Washington favored appointing a
hand-picked body of Iraqis, guided by American experts, to draft the Iraqi
constitution along secular, democratic, and capitalist lines, Sistani decided
to act. He called on the faithful to demonstrate for an elected Parliament,
which would then be charged with drafting the constitution - and he succeeded.
Sistani then issued a religious decree calling on the
faithful to participate in the vote to create a representative assembly
committed to achieving the exit of foreign troops through peaceful means. The
Bush White House, however, exploited Sistani's move as part of its own
"democracy promotion" campaign in Iraq, with Iraqi fingers dipped in
inedible purple ink becoming its much flaunted "democracy symbol."
"Sistani warned that he would call for popular
non-cooperation with the occupying powers if the election was not held on
time."
When Allawi began dithering about holding the vote for an
interim parliament by January 2005, as stipulated by United Nations Security
Council Resolution 1546, Sistani warned that he would call for popular
non-cooperation with the occupying powers if it was not held on time. In the
elections that followed, the United Iraqi Alliance - the brain-child of Sistani
- emerged as the majority group and thus the leading designer of the new
constitution. Respecting Sistani's views, the Iraqi constitution stipulated
that Sharia (Islamic law) was to be the principal source of Iraqi
legislation and that no law would be passed that violated the undisputed tenets
of Islam.
In the December 2005 parliamentary general election under
the new constitution, the UIA became the largest group, a mere 10 seats short
of a majority. Though Ibrahim Jaafari of Al Daawa won the contest for UIA
leadership by one vote, he was rejected as prime minister by the Kurdish
parties, holding the parliament's swing votes, as well as by Washington and
London. A crisis paralyzed the government. Once again, Sistani's intercession
defused a crisis. He persuaded Jaafari to step down.
Jaafari's successor, Maliki, is as reverential toward
Sistani as other Shiite leaders. For instance, in December 2006, when American
officials reportedly urged Maliki to postpone Saddam Hussein's execution until
after the religious holiday of Eid Al Adha (the Festival of Sacrifice), Maliki
turned to Sistani. The Grand Ayatollah favored an immediate execution. And so
it came to pass.
Sistani's next blow fell on the Bush administration earlier
this month. He let be known his disapproval of Washington-backed legislation to
allow thousands of former Baath Party members to resume their public service
positions. That undermined one of the White House's pet projects in Iraq - an
attempt to entice into the political mainstream part of the alienated Sunni
minority that is at the heart of the Iraqi insurgency.
In sum, while refraining from participating in everyday
politics, Sistani intervenes on the issues of paramount importance to the Iraqi
people, as he sees them. Western journalists, who routinely describe him as
belonging to the "quietist school" of Shiite Islam (at odds with the
"interventionist school"), are therefore off the mark. Given
Sistani's uncompromising opposition to the presence of foreign troops in Iraq,
his staunch nationalism, and the unmatched reverence that he evokes,
particularly among the majority Shiites, he poses a greater long-term threat to
Washington's interests in Iraq than Muqtada al-Sadr; and, far from belonging to
opposite schools of Shiite Islam, Sadr and Sistani, both staunch nationalists,
complement each other - much to the puzzled frustration of the Bush White
House.
What must worry Washington more than the massive size of the
demonstration on April 9 was its mixed Shiite-Sunni composition and
nationalistic ambience. The prospect of Sadr's appeal extending to a section of
the Sunni community, with the tacit support of Sistani, is the nightmare
scenario that the Bush administration most dreads. Yet it may come to pass.
Dilip Hiro is the author of
Secrets and Lies: "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and After and, most
recently, Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the
World's Vanishing Oil Resources (Nation Books).
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