|
|
|
A
poster of Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani in Kazemiya, Baghdad
|
Iraqi
politics have always been somewhat of a hangman’s game. The
noose has seen many - politicians, opposition members and
pundits - swing from a lamppost in central Baghdad.
With
Saddam’s ouster, that game may still be a horrible specter of
the next few months, if not years. There is anger (between
Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians and Turkoman) in the north of Iraq over
Kurdish claims to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The danger of war
in northern Iraq (with Turkish, Syrian and Iranian forces
injecting their military might) is ever-looming.
In
the so-called Sunni Triangle, Sunnis are feeling
disenfranchised. They are demanding a new census, believing
current figures showing a 60-percent Shiite majority to be
politically motivated from Washington. The Sunnis point to
nearly 10,000 mostly Sunni Iraqis detained in squalid war camps
in the desert with no hearings or investigations. Crops and
fields in Sunni areas are uprooted and/or burned because of
collective punishment, and entire towns are sanctioned off
behind barbed wire in the so-called Sunni Triangle. Some
prominent Sunnis have called for a regional government of their
own.
In
Baghdad, Basra and the outlying southern villages there is a
wind of political freedom for Iraq’s long-repressed Shiites.
November’s Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) and Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) decision to execute a full hand-over
of affairs to Iraq in June 30th forced Shiite political powers
to mobilize.
In
the past two months, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah
Ali Al-Husseini Al-Sistani, 75, has cast doubt on these
hand-over plans declaring that nothing short of full elections
can capture the political will of the Iraqi people. Although
some Sunnis are opposed to elections before US forces leave, the
Ayatollah enjoys considerable support among many Sunni
politicians. The Ayatollah has persisted in his insistence that
national elections be held throughout Iraq to create a new
legislature. The idea that picked regional caucuses will
“elect” the Iraqi legislature has shocked the Shiite
community who fear that once again they may be on the shortest
end of the straw.
The
CPA panicked, and its head Paul Bremer rushed to UNHQ to
convince the Security Council to send a delegation to broker a
deal with Al-Sistani - not surprising since high-placed Iraqi
sources have admitted that Al-Sistani will not sway and not even
meet with Bremer or other officials who do not believe in the
sanctity of elections.
Word
out of Iraq today paints a rather vain attempt by the UN
delegation, headed by UN Special Envoy Lakhdar Ibrahimi.
Ibrahimi, who spearheaded a UN role in Afghanistan in the
mid-1990s and lately after the fall of the Taliban, was said to
had resisted going to Iraq but finally caved in after much US
pressure.
He
emerged from a meeting with Al-Sistani on Thursday to tell
reporters that the Shiite cleric would not budge on the central
issue of elections.
Other
Shiite clerics have also found religious grounds to criticize a
new Iraqi constitution which they fear will be far more secular
than the Baathist legal framework and not cater to the Islamic
flavor of the country. Al-Sistani’s position received strong
endorsement from former rotating IGC president Shiite cleric
Abdel Aziz Hakim: “A provisional national assembly should be
elected by the Iraqi people, and this assembly should choose the
government.”
The
specter of an Islamic government in Iraq is not the regional
nightmare one may expect to read about in foreign press.
However, it does pose a problem for the Bush administration. In
January, President Bush spoke out for the first time against the
likelihood of a fanatical Islamic government. This may have
forced Shiite political pundits to dig their heels a little
deeper.
An
Islamic government in Iraq is a likely scenario because US
foreign policy and the planning for post-war Iraq were
influenced by external forces that were simply out of touch with
the reality of Iraqi religious aspirations. So much planning,
effort, disinformation, public relations, and diplomacy were put
into the war effort, but the post-war religious power that would
likely emerge in Iraq was completely overlooked. Members of the
Iraqi National Congress, the main Iraqi opposition group (with
much influence in the Pentagon, but regarded with disdain in the
State Department for its unreliable track record) had assured
the Bush administration that the Shiites of Iraq would rise up
against Saddam, fight side by side with US forces and welcome
them with flowers. Despite urgent efforts by mainstream media to
portray the latter, the Shiites never rose up against Saddam and
are now proving to be a thorn in the side of American plans for
Iraq.
When
the Ayatollah Al-Hakim returned to Iraq, his homecoming was
compared by many Middle Eastern analysts (not Washington think
tanks who are not in the Middle East and rely only on Israeli
sources) to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to Iran in 1979.
The August assassination of Al-Hakim in bombing of the Imam Ali
Mosque, and subsequent killing of dozens of Muslim worshippers
on a Friday, brought his influence to an end.
Al-Sistani
is now running the show. Whether he is left to lead Iraqis in
their quest for elections, or suffers the fate of his
predecessor (an assassination attempt was rumored, then quickly
denied last week), there is very little that can assuage the
political flexing of Iraq’s Shiite and Sunni communities.
Postscript:
At press times, reports from Iraq indicated that the UN was
slowly moving to back the US position that elections could not
possibly be held prior to June 30. Shiite clerics warned after
Friday prayers that ignoring the needs and demands of Iraqis
could lead to open revolt. This marks the first time violence
has been threatened if elections are not held.
Firas
Al-Atraqchi is a Canadian journalist of Iraqi heritage.
Holding an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication, he has
eleven years of experience covering
Middle East
issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry. You can
reach him at firascape@hotmail.com.
|
