Threat to the political
process By Syed Saleem
Shahzad
KARACHI - Firebrand Iraqi Shi'ite
cleric-turned-warlord Muqtada al-Sadr is commonly
referred to as Iran's connection in Iraq, but in fact he
is in the process of destroying the decades-old Iranian
dream of exporting its revolution to Iraq.
The
revered Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, for the fourth and the
last legitimate caliph for Sunni Muslims and the first
imam of the Shi'ite sect of Islam, is under siege and
immense threat from US-led forces, which aim to take
"full and final action" against Muqtada and his Mehdi
Army and followers holed up close to the shrine and the
adjoining ancient cemetery since fighting broke out in
the city on August 5.
Thousands of Shi'ites on
Monday gathered around the shrine as a "human shield" to
prevent US forces from coming close, even as aircraft
and helicopters circled the skies above. The showdown in
Najaf, which threatens to turn into a direct clash
between Shi'ites and US forces across the country -
there is already trouble in Baghdad - is a situation
that neither the Iraqi Shi'ite clergy nor its main
supporters in Shi'ite Iran envisaged.
As a
result, Muqtada risks becoming marginalized, not only
among the Shi'ite political and religious clergy in
Iraq, but in other parts of the world, where an all-out
clash between the US and Muqtada and his followers is
feared for the damage it could cause to the nascent
political process in the country, and the wider
implications of a possible Muslim backlash.
On
Monday, tribal and religious leaders attending a
three-day national conference in Baghdad decided to send
60 delegates to Najaf to try to persuade Muqtada to call
off his fighters and participate in the country's
political process. The conference is a gathering of
1,300 Iraqis from all ethnic and religious groups
convened to debate their country's course until
elections are held in January.
After the fall of
Saddam Hussein, Muqtada stationed himself in Najaf,
along with a few thousand supporters. His followers also
gained widespread support in the Shi'ite-dominated slum
of Sadr City in Baghdad. Very soon, thousands more
rallied behind Muqtada, championing him as as an anti-US
leader and the sole such Shi'ite voice. These included
some Sunni tribes from the outskirts of Najaf, and
former Ba'athist Shi'ites.
Yet as Muqtada's
resistance continues, neither Iran, the largest Shi'ite
state in the world, nor radical organizations such as
the Lebanese Hezbollah, have raised their voices in his
support, although they have called for a cessation of
the fighting.
Iran's grand
designs Muqtada's latest resistance comes at a
crucial time for Iran, as its decades-old plans to
export its Islamic revolution of 1979 to Iraq were close
to fruition in the post-Saddam era. From Baghdad to
Basra, newly invigorated Shi'ite parties such as the
Badr Brigade and the Dawa Party mobilized the Shi'ite
religious hierarchy and masses.
Control of the
shrine in Baghdad of the important religious figure,
Imam Mosa Kazim, is an interesting case in point. For
several centuries the shrine was administered by his
descendants, who happened to be Sunni Muslim, the most
recent being Syed Sabah bin Ibrahim Mosvi, whom this
correspondent interviewed in Baghdad shortly before the
US invasion (seeBin Laden gives Iraq an unlikely
unity, February 28).
Now the shrine has
been taken over by Shi'ites and and it serves as a
Shi'ite heartland in Baghdad where the Shiite leadership
regularly holds congregations with Shi'ites from all
over the world. The shrine is also used to distribute
the literature of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, the
leader of Iran's Islamic revolution, and to give
speeches to pilgrims.
Strangely, Saddam allowed
Khomenei to spend time in Najaf during the Shah of
Iran's rule. However, once the ayatollah's revolution
took hold in Iran after 1979, southern Iraq's Shi'ite
majority became a target. Saddam at first welcomed the
Iranian revolution, declaring that Islamic revolution or
any other revolution that purported to be Islamic must
be a friend of the Arab revolution.
However, the
ayatollahs in Tehran were not convinced, and along with
the "American Satan", Saddam and his "infidel Ba'ath
Party" were public enemies number one. A militant member
of the new leadership in Tehran, Hujjat al-Islam Sadeq
Khalkhali, openly claimed that Saddam stood in the way
of attempts to export the revolution, and Shi'ites in
south Iraq were urged to rise up against Saddam.
Khomenei's main ally in Iraq was Mohammed Bakr
al-Sadr (Muqtada's grandfather), the head of Iraq's
Shi'ite Muslim Dawa Party, whom Khomenei had befriended
during his exile in Najaf. Bakr called Khomenei his
spiritual leader and installed himself as the
ayatollah's official deputy in Iraq, meaning a potential
bid to revolt against Ba'ath Party rule in Iraq. The
action followed several skirmishes, including attacks on
Saddam's then foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, and events
finally led to Bakr and his sister being arrested and
taken to Baghdad, where, after a summary trial, they
were executed in 1980.
In the following decade
Iran and Iraq fought a draining war, and Tehran never
gave up on trying to incite Shi'ites in the south to
rebel against the secular Ba'ath government, without
much success. Then, after the first Gulf War in 1991,
the Shi'ites did rebel - with some US encouragement as
well - but Saddam crushed this rising with a brutality
that became a hallmark of his rule.
However,
after the US toppled the Saddam government, Tehran
clearly saw a chance to pull some political strings
through the many Shi'ite parties, such as Dawa and
al-Badr, whose political wings were now a part of the
new governing councils, besides Shi'ite politicians in
the mainstream political parties.
Underpinning
this plan was the rejection of violence and full Shi'ite
participation in the evolution of the political process
in Iraq - that is, controlling events from within the
US-designed framework. In time, it was hoped that what
Tehran viewed as a rising tide of fundamentalism in
southern Iraq would see clerics elected to positions of
power, from where they could eventually spread the
Islamic revolution into the heart of Iraq.
But
then along came Muqtada, who vows to spill the "last
drop of my blood" in resisting the occupation forces.
This threatens to deprive Shi'ites of their possible
lead political role after January's elections.
At the same time, much of the heat has been
taken out of the situation in places like Fallujah in
the Sunni triangle in central Iraq, as well as among the
Sunni majority in northern Iraq, where there is a
virtual truce between US forces and resistance fighters,
except of a few skirmishes. This could, though, be a
question of the resistance enjoying some breathing space
until the next battles start.
In the meantime,
in the south Shi'ite youths from Baghdad to Basra are
taking up arms and fighting alongside the Mehdi Army,
and a wide-scale Shi'ite clash with allied forces is
imminent, exactly what Iran does not want.
Allama Hassan Turabi is a key political leader
of the Shi'ite community in Iraq and enjoys good terms
with his counterparts in Iran. Speaking to Asia Times
Online, he maintained that Shi'ites in other parts of
the world viewed Muqtada with suspicion and that Muqtada
was a "naive cleric not qualified to be graded as a
religious leader of the Shi'ite nation".
"Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani [the preeminent
Shi'ite leader in Iraq] supports the Iraq elections that
will pave the way for the installation of a legitimate
government in Iraq and give the US an exit strategy from
Iraq. But the way Muqtada is behaving will cause Iraq
further problems.
"He has systematically
sidelined the real and acclaimed leadership of Shi'ites,
like Sistani and Ayatollah Bashir, two top Shi'ite
clerics for Shi'ite nations worldwide. He besieged their
houses and tried to discredit them in the eyes of common
Iraqis by calling them non-Arabs who did not have the
right to speak in the affairs of Iraq, as Ayatollah
Sistani is of Iranian origin and Bashir comes from
Pakistan.
"Not only Iran, but even Iraqi Shi'ite
organizations are silent as they do not want to make
Najaf a battleground for the ambitions of a naive
cleric," said Turabi.
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