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Divided Shi'ites in power
play
By Hooman Peimani
Against
a background of speculation and hope on the part of the
Americans for a Shi'ite uprising in Baghdad, Mohsen
Hakim, a leader of the Iranian-based Supreme Assembly of
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI), stated this week
that the Shi'ite residents of Baghdad "will try to
remain on the sidelines to suffer the least possible
damage, until they are certain that the Iraqi regime's
repressive machine has been annihilated. When this point
is reached, they will start organizing themselves."
While the rapid military developments in Iraq
have made the behavior of Baghdad residents mainly
irrelevant now, the Hakim statement indicated SAIRI's
determination to claim its share of power in a
post-Saddam Hussein era.
Hakim's statement was
followed by the announcement of the SAIRI leader,
Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir Hakim, that he will soon return
to Iraq after 23 years of living in exile in Iran. His
host country has generously helped him create his group,
the largest and the most organized Iraqi Shi'ite group
with a significant well-armed and well-trained military
wing, the Badr Corps, whose numerical strength is
estimated at 10,000 to 20,000.
On the day of the
announcement, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid
Reza Asefi stated that the SAIRI and its military wing
are Iraqi entities, which make their own decisions and
have nothing to do with the Iranian government. He added
that Iran "sees no reason to interfere in their attitude
and policies and do[es] not provide a safe place for
them". Asefi's statement on the SAIRI's independence
sought to relieve his government of any responsibility
regarding Ayatollah Hakim's decision and the predictable
transfer to Iraq of the SAIRI members residing in Iran.
This seemed prudent given the American government's
warnings to Iran regarding the activities of the Badr
Corps inside Iraq and its request that Iran should reign
in that military force.
For its opposition to
Saddam and his ruling Ba'ath Party, Ayatollah Hakim was
tortured and imprisoned by the Iraqi regime prior to his
flight to Iran in 1980. For the same reason, many of his
close family members, including his brothers, were
executed by Saddam's regime. Given Ayatollah Hakim's
well-known political credentials, the SAIRI's role in
the uprising of Iraqi Shi'ites following the 1991 Gulf
War and several hit-and-run military operations inside
Iraq since the early 1980s, there is no question about
the SAIRI 's political influence in Iraq. However, the
extent of such influence among Iraqis is yet to be seen.
The Shi'ites, who constitute for over 60 percent
of Iraq's population, have been politically,
economically and socially marginalized by the Iraqi
Ba'ath regime, representing mainly the Sunni minority.
Being dissatisfied with this situation, they will surely
seek to secure a proportional representation in any
future Iraqi political system. Given their numerical
strength and years of subjugation, there is no doubt, if
any at all, that a post-Saddam Iraq cannot be stable
unless their grievances are met.
Thanks to
decades of dictatorship and the constant suppression of
opposition groups, the majority of Iraqi opposition
groups are weak, unarmed, foreign-based and/or lack
strong popular backing. Exceptions are the two major
Kurdish groups - the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and
the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) - and the SAIRI.
Although there is no strong evidence of its widespread
popularity inside Iraq, the documented SAIRI operations
inside Iraq, including the failed assassination of
Saddam's son Udi in the 1990s, indicates a degree of
organization and backing among Iraqi Shi'ites. This is
in addition to its numerically significant Iran-based
Iraqi supporters consisting of dissidents, refugees and
prisoners of war who have refused to return to Iraq
since the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88).
The SAIRI has every reason to welcome the end of
the Saddam regime, against which it has fought since the
early 1980s. However, it does not wish to see an
American-controlled Iraq in which its interests and
those of its Shi'ite constituency could be undermined.
As a result, it has attended the American-organized
Iraqi opposition conferences since last year.
Furthermore, it has been in touch with the Americans and
the British through its offices in Washington and
London, and also through a pro-American Iraqi opposition
group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC). However, it
has refused to play along with the American plan for
Iraq. Thus, when the US-led war broke out, the SAIRI did
not take sides. Its leader, Ayatollah Hakim, urged Iraqi
Shi'ites to remain neutral since he blamed both the
Americans and the Saddam regime for the war.
Now
that the post-Saddam era appears to have begun, the
SAIRI is preparing to establish itself as a main
political force inside Iraq. Even though it is a major
organized group in the absence of strong political
contenders, the SAIRI is concerned about an unfolding
American plan to create an alternative Shi'ite
leadership to Ayatollah Hakim.
Reportedly, with
the approval of the American government, a London-based
exiled Iraqi Shi'ite leader, Ayatollah Sayyed Abdelmajid
Khoei (al-Khoei), returned to Iraq's holy city of Najaf
on Monday. However, his killing on Thursday by a
yet-to-be-identified assassin in the holy shrine of Imam
Ali in Najaf unexpectedly ended his hoped-for
contribution to the mentioned plan. Khoei could have
capitalized on his reputation as an anti-Saddam
high-ranking Shi'ite clergy and on that of his late
father, Ayatollah Sayyed Abdul-Qasim Khoei, who died in
house arrest in 1992. Khoei was hacked to death by a mob
at the shrine along with Haider al-Kadar, a widely
disliked Saddam loyalist and a part of his ministry of
religion. According to some reports, Khoei had tried to
intervene to defuse a confrontation between rival
Shi'ite groups.
Khoei had called on many
occasions for Shi'ite cooperation with the US. His
return to Shi'ite-dominated Najaf 180 kilometers south
of Baghdad immediately after the American forces'
capture of the city suggested that the Americans were
planning to promote him as an acceptable alternative to
pro-Iranian Ayatollah Hakim. Beside his potential role
as a legitimizer of the American occupation of Iraq, his
rushed return to a country still in the midst of war
indicated an American plan to prevent Iran from
influencing Iraq through the SAIRI once the Saddam
regime is fully eliminated.
US Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld's warnings last week requesting
Iran to rein in the Badr Corps seemed to be a
complementary measure to ensure the absence of a
pro-Iranian organized armed Shi'ite group capable of
challenging the American plan. Such a group could
potentially mushroom in Iraq if there is a power vacuum
in the post-Saddam era. The simultaneous return of Ahmad
Chalabi, the Shi'ite leader of the secular INC, to
Iraq's city of Nassiriya, is another aspect of the US
plan, while serving American efforts to control the
occupied country.
Apart from the need for his
presence inside Iraq to rally support around the SAIRI,
Ayatollah Hakim's decision to return to Iraq, most
probably to Najaf where he is well-known, seems to aim
at meeting the American challenge. Khoei's death should
not allay the SAIRI's fears as the traditional rivalry
among the Iraqi high-ranking Shi'ite clergy provides an
opportunity for the Americans to find another ally to
fill the gap caused by Khoei's bloody removal from the
political scene.
SAIRI is gearing up to prevent
its exclusion from the political scene in the
post-Saddam era. Having that concern in mind, London
SAIRI representative Hamed al-Bayati implied his group's
readiness to challenge any plan to that effect, while
intending not to provoke American hostility. He stated
that if Washington "tries to exclude us, we will see
what our position will be. So far this is not the case."
Given the mentioned background, Saddam's fall
will provoke fierce competition over political control
not only among different ethnic and religious groups,
but also within Iraq's numerically dominant Shi'ites,
with potential dire consequences for Iraq's stability
and quite possibly for that of Iran as well.
Dr Hooman Peimani works as an
independent consultant with international organizations
in Geneva and does research in international
relations.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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