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THE
ROVING EYE - EXCLUSIVE
A Shi'ite warning to
America
By Pepe Escobar
NAJAF, Iraq - Ammar Abdul Aziz al-Hakim,
white-turbaned, with horn-rimmed glasses, is polished,
soft-spoken, as he sits on a cushion in a secluded
chamber to receive Asia Times Online at the Najaf office
of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq
(SCIRI).
Across the blinding-white compound
where, under ultra-strict security, streams of clerics,
merchants and powerful sheikhs traipse, a group of
workers prepares what will be a shrine erected over the
tomb of slain grand ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim,
the high-profile victim of a car bombing in front of the
sacred Imam Ali Shrine on August 29.
Ammar Abdul
Aziz is a crucial player. He is the son of Abdul Aziz
al-Hakim, arguably the most powerful Shi'ite member of
the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. He is a nephew
of the murdered grand ayatollah. And until recently, he
was commander of the Badr Brigades, the military wing of
the SCIRI.
Ammar makes it clear that the SCIRI
is "a council of many parties, including religious
people, officers, women, volunteers, like a parliament.
We think that if the occupation forces want to leave
Iraq as occupiers, so the UN may take charge, then we
can support them. But they have to give us a calendar
for the end of the occupation." This is "very close" to
the French proposal at the United Nations Security
Council: "It is in Iraqi people's rights to be totally
free in our own land." The SCIRI considers that the
Governing Council is "trying to take independent
decisions. If we feel that this council cannot be
totally independent, we will leave. We don't feel like
this yet."
Ammar Abdul Aziz confirms that the
all-out privatization of Iraq was a Governing Council
decision: "Most members agreed. There was a lot of worry
before, because of the ethnic representation. But now we
feel the council is almost homogeneous." The 25-member
US-appointed council is constituted mostly to reflect
the country's Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish populations.
He is aware of US President George W Bush's
Executive Order 13315, signed on August 28, which in
fact represents a US takeover of Iraq's wealth: "He has
signed many papers. But one day the occupiers will
leave. The Iraqi people will not allow any of these
contracts." Ammar Abdul Aziz is adamant that as far as
the calendar for elections is concerned, "it is not the
Americans who take this decision, but the Governing
Council". The negotiation at this moment revolves around
the probability of the council writing a new
constitution in six months before a general election
tentatively scheduled for April 19, 2004: "No one will
say we need the Americans after that."
The
assassination of the grand ayatollah remains a very
emotional topic in Najaf. Ammar Abdul Aziz says that for
the SCIRI, the killers were "people from the Saddam
[Hussein] regime cooperating with some tough people,
Iraqis with relationship to other countries. The
al-Qaeda declaration after the bombing proves they might
have had a hand on it."
The SCIRI's basic
message is that Shi'ites are waiting - but not forever:
"We are waiting to hear from al-Hawza [the powerful
Shi'ite 'Vatican', which sits in Najaf]. The Shi'ite
scientifics have a special understanding of Islam. They
believe that peaceful ways to reach what we want [are]
better than using force. When we dealt with Saddam, we
didn't have weapons. When he killed us for just saying a
word, we didn't have any rights, we found that all
peaceful ways were blocked. Then we established huge
organizations like the Badr Brigades and other military
units to defend us. We were stronger than him. A [large]
area [near the Iranian border] was in the heart of the
resistance. All this in spite of Saddam's toughness, his
use of all kinds of weapons, chemical weapons: he could
not control this area. In the end he tried to evaporate
the water of the rivers and marshes. Shi'ites are
peaceful people, but if it is necessary, no one can stop
them. Because they believe in God."
Muqtada
al Sadr: Punk hero?
The SCIRI's conciliatory
position - at least for the moment - toward the
Americans, as articulated by Ammar Abdul Aziz, is being
strained to the limit. Six months after the end of
Saddam's regime - which victimized the majority Shi'ites
to an horrific extent - the key question is, who really
appeals to Shi'ite hearts and minds.
When
Baghdad fell on April 9, there were three candidates -
all of them sons of very influent religious dynasties:
grand ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim (now dead),
Sayyed Abdul Majid al-Khoei (also murdered, in April)
and Muqtada al-Sadr.
Khoei, son of the late
grand ayatollah Abdul Qasim al-Khoei and a descendant of
the Prophet Mohammed, had returned to Najaf from exile
in London. On April 10 he was holding a reconciliation
meeting at the Imam Ali Shrine when armed men stabbed
him, carried him 500 meters through the streets of
Najaf, and killed him with a bullet to the head.
Grand ayatollah al-Hakim, who had also returned
from exile in Iran, was killed along with more than 100
people in a car bombing beside the Imam Ali Shrine on
August 29.
Al-Hakim's tremendous influence and
his message of democracy, freedom and tolerance of other
religions are in stark contrast to the controversial
Muqtada al-Sadr. Unlike the media-savvy people at the
SCIRI, Muqtada remains extremely elusive.
Repeated requests by Asia Times Online for an
interview were indefinitely postponed by his bureau in
Baghdad. Muqtada is something of a working-class hero in
Sadr City - the 2-million-strong Baghdad slum previously
known as Saddam City. He claims to be thirtysomething,
but some people in Baghdad estimate that he is not older
than 28, and probably even younger. Even under Saddam's
regime, his network was infiltrated by multiple
intelligence services. Established clerics and Shi'ite
intellectuals consider him a punk - not only because of
his trademark sneer, but because he speaks colloquial
rather than classical Arabic sprinkled with slang. Some
Shi'ites even implicate him in the murders of his rivals
Khoei and al-Hakim.
There are many reasons for
Muqtada's widespread popularity, though. The main one is
that he is the son of grand ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq
al-Sadr, murdered by Saddam's regime in 1999. In
addition, he delivers fiery speeches - widely available
on video compact disc in Baghdad - against the
occupiers: he derides the Governing Council as puppets;
and he has nothing but contempt for the traditional
Shi'ite religious leaders congregated at al-Hawza, which
both Khoei and al-Hakim were. Muqtada insists that the
marjaaiyya - the top Shi'ite clerics - have no
popular base. His model is Ayatollah Kazim al-Husseini
al-Haeri, an ultra-conservative Iraqi Shi'ite still
based in Iran.
Immediately after the fall of
Baghdad - with no Ba'ath Party structure and no security
left in place - Muqtada acted with lightning speed to
fill the power vacuum. From his base in Kufa, near
Najaf, he dispatched the Muqtada faithful all over the
Shi'ite south to set up neighborhood committees and take
over local hospitals, collect garbage, protect
warehouses, establish roadblocks to deter looters,
protect electricity and water stations and transform
Ba'ath Party offices into religious centers.
Muqtada commands a militia called the Jaysh
al-Mahdi: on a recent religious holiday in Najaf, Asia
Times Online experienced face-to-face its thuggish
behavior. The militia is not nearly as well disciplined
as the Badr Brigades. Both militias anyway remain
infinitely more powerful than the badly equipped Iraqi
police. Muqtada's acolytes and the Jaysh al Mahdi
enforce a policy according to which no Iraqis may drink
alcohol, and all Iraqi women should be veiled.
Muqtada's key rhetorical missiles are directed
against Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, arguably the top
Shi'ite religious authority in Iraq, born in Iran,
discreet and overtly apolitical. If Muqtada is the punk,
Sistani is the pope. Sistani is a traditionalist,
according to which the role of a Shi'ite cleric must be
strictly spiritual. Muqtada is a militant. His base
remains the desperately poor urban proletariat of Sadr
City in Baghdad. But he has practically no support in
holy Najaf - which is literally inundated with posters
and photos of grand ayatollah al-Hakim. The Shi'ite
middle classes in Baghdad regard Muqtada as no more than
a street upstart.
The issue is, though, that
Muqtada is getting increasingly strong support from
Iranian hardliners. Unlike grand ayatollah al-Hakim and
the SCIRI, who are in favor of a secular, democratic
system for Iraq, Muqtada is very much aligned with
Iranian supreme guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the
ultra-hardline head of the Iranian judiciary, Mahmoud
Hashemi Shahroudi, both recently visited in Tehran by
Muqtada. This visit left Muqtada with a lot of money to
engage in a two-pronged strategy: to fight the
traditionalists al-Hawza, Sistani in particular, and to
fight for an Islamic regime in Iraq.
At least
for the moment, the chief US administrator in Iraq, L
Paul Bremer, the Iraqi Governing Council and the
marjaaiyya in Najaf are all adopting a "wait and
see" attitude toward Muqtada. They know they cannot
neutralize him at the moment because he is capable of
putting a million very angry people on to the streets of
Baghdad: nobody else can. The Shi'ite middle class also
knows very well that although Muqtada is intolerable, he
cannot be easily dismissed. It's even possible that the
controversial Turkish decision to send troops to Iraq -
as the Americans badly wanted - might be the opening
Muqtada and his backers in Iran were waiting for. Sunni
Sheikh Abdel Sattar Jabar, a member of the Governing
Council, went straight to the point: "Turkey, a Sunni
country, is called for a military intervention in a
Sunni area. So the Shi'ites also may have the right to
demand Shi'ite troops deployed in their area." Which
means troops from Shi'ite Iran.
All Iraqis know
that if Turkey sends troops to Iraq, this will mean the
dreaded opening of a Pandora's box. Shi'ites may have
been very patient so far, but not a single one of them
has forgotten that the Turks are descendants of the
hated Ottoman colonial power.
Waiting on
al-Hawza
Six months after the end of nightmare
Saddam, what is al-Hawza to do? Reclusive Grand
Ayatollah Sistani never talks to the press. But Sheikh
Saleh al-Tahee, a respected marja (spiritual
reference), author of many Koranic studies (including a
non-Freudian interpretation of dreams) and a key member
of al-Hawza, does talk. A Najaf poet, one of his close
friends, directs Asia Times Online to a room in a
medieval Najaf back alley filled with white-turbaned
students of the sheikh, a man revered as holy in this
holiest of Shi'ite cities.
Sheikh Saleh says,
"Islam is a religion of political and religious
problems. There's no separation. Islam is a religion of
politics." He defends the legitimacy of al-Hawza against
Muqtada's tirades: "Al-Hawza is a school 1,000 years
old. There are many references in charge. Every
reference is independent. We now know that we got rid of
the previous regime and suffering. And we know Americans
are promising they will leave Iraq. Even if they don't
see themselves as occupiers, they should tell us the
date they will leave Iraq. The resistance will be
peaceful during this time."
Sheikh Saleh
stresses that the occupation is fought "by our brains
and by our religion ... There is no difference between
Sunnis and Shi'ites. What the media say is not real. We
do have many objections regarding this Governing
Council, established under ethnic lines. Most Iraqis
suffered from the previous regime; now there's a relaxed
period, as if they were released from hospital after
surgery. But we are daily watching events, and it's
getting worse. Prices have doubled. The occupation is
printing a new kind of money, selling industries and
commercial establishments. Iraq is a very rich country,
but the population is one of the poorest anywhere. The
previous regime lost a lot of money. It's not wise to
get Iraq straight back into the world system."
Bremer, in line with Pentagon thought, has
repeatedly said that Iraqis are disqualified from
managing themselves. Sheikh Saleh says, "Iraqis have
been qualified to do it since the first month of the
occupation, [but not being able to] has brought all
sorts of problems to the Iraqis and also to the
Americans." The sheikh insists that "we still don't know
the political and economic reasons for the occupation.
They have used us as a training field, in the beginning
of a big strategy."
But will Shi'ite patience
run out? The sheikh answers with a beatific smile, "The
English left Iraq after the revolution in the 1920s. It
started with only five words, here in Najaf."
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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