THE ROVING EYE A unifying factor across
Iraq By Pepe Escobar
"I
advise the dictatorial, agent government to resign ...
Iraqi people demand the resignation of the government
... they [US] replaced Saddam with a government worse
than him." - Muqtada al-Sadr,
August 13
Imagine a Muslim army about to bomb
the Vatican with the help of a few Christian mercenaries
while the Pope is away, recovering from an angioplasty
in London and silent about the whole drama. This is
roughly what is happening in Najaf, Iraq, where the
forces of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the United
States stand eyeball to eyeball pending a "final
showdown".
First, let's take a look at where the
main players currently stand. Contrary to widespread
media perception, Muqtada is not a punk: he is probably
one of the most popular figures in the complex Iraqi
political spectrum, certainly at the grassroot Shi'ite
level. During the first American siege of Najaf four
months ago, his popularity was reported to be above 90%.
The second-most popular figure in the country now may be
Shi'ite religious eminence Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani,
although he positions himself as apolitical. As for the
American-imposed Prime Minister (over a virtual
parliament) Iyad Allawi, his popularity would be
somewhere in single-digit territory. He essentially
represents no Iraqis.
Pierre-Jean Luizard, a
researcher at the elite French think-tank CNRS and a
Middle East specialist, believes that Muqtada may have
been forced by events to occupy this crucial historic
role and may not even be fully aware of the awesome
implications; but today he offers to most Iraqis "the
image of being the only one capable of unifying the
country beyond communal divisions". No wonder that
Muqtada has widely become an icon of Muslim resistance.
It's never enough to emphasize the crucial
significance and the complex patterns of mythology,
history and tradition embodied by the golden-domed Imam
Ali Shrine in "Shi'ite Vatican" Najaf, around which the
present fighting is centered. Besides the Shrine of Imam
Ali, there are graves of other prophets of Allah -
Prophet Adam and Prophet Noah. Abraham the patriarch and
his son Isaac once bought land in Najaf in what is now
called the Valley of Peace - none other than the
gigantic Wadi al-Salaam, the world's largest cemetery,
where a few hundred of Muqtada's Mehdi Army fighters are
holed up fighting the Americans. Or, in many Muslim
hearts and minds, where a Shi'ite resistance is fighting
infidel troops.
Get Muqtada Former
American proconsul in Iraq, L Paul Bremer, went after
Muqtada al-Sadr in the months before the US handed over
sovereignty to Iraqis on June 28. He failed miserably -
and enhanced Muqtada's status as a resistance hero. Now
it's Allawi's offensive - or "Saddam without a
moustache", as he is widely known in the streets of
Baghdad and the resistance-controlled Sunni triangle.
It's still the George W Bush administration's same
flawed strategy in action (no politics, no diplomacy,
just "smoke them out"). But now the whole scheme is
sub-contracted.
Inside Iraq, Sunni and Shi'ite
alike are condemning the siege of Najaf as a
"bloodbath". There have been huge demonstrations against
it in the Muslim world - totally in synch with the Iraqi
Committee of Ulemas, which has ruled that no Iraqis may
collaborate with the occupier in operations that risk
the lives of Muslims. Arab leaders, as expected, have
turned their attention to the Olympic Games on
television.
According to the London-based
al-Hayat newspaper, Shi'ite masses are flocking to
Najaf, where they have already formed a human shield
around the shrine. Fallujah - the resistance capital in
the Sunni triangle - sent a huge convoy of aid to Najaf.
Sunni clerics and tribal leaders met with Shi'ite
clerics to express their solidarity.
The
political fallout of Sistani's thunderous silence and
non-condemnation of the American siege may be
earth-shaking - further undercutting his own moral
authority, not to mention crucial Iraqi nationalist
credentials. Some Shi'ites risk saying that Sistani
should resign - a concept that is nevertheless totally
alien to the Marja'iyya - the top-level Shi'ite
religious body. Sistani's loss, though, is to other
ayatollahs' gain.
The ayatollah power
struggle Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Husain
Fadlallah is from Najaf, although he's been living in
Lebanon since the mid-1960s. He's an independent, not
very close either with the ayatollahs in Tehran or the
Hezbollah in Lebanon. But he's very popular with the
Dawa Party in Iraq - at least with the majority faction
that is not cooperating with the Americans. Through a
fatwa (ruling), Fadlallah has publicly instigated
the resistance to throw out the Americans by all means
necessary - this is exactly what millions of Shi'ites
were expecting from Sistani himself. Interviewed by the
pan-Arab alJazeera television station, Fadlallah
articulated what's in the minds of many Muslims: their
biggest threat is the United States; Saddam was a US
agent; and the Najaf drama was provoked by - who else -
the occupier.
An even more crucial figure, Grand
Ayatollah Kadhim al-Haeri, based in the holy city of
Qom, in Iran, has also issued his own fatwa: it
essentially says that no Iraqi, Sunni or Shi'ite, may
fight another Muslim on behalf of Allawi's regime.
Al-Haeri is one of the five great Najaf ayatollahs - and
the most engaged politically. He's close to the line of
the late leader of the Iranian Islamic revolution of
1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, and says on the
record that he will only go back to Iraq after the
American occupation has ended. Meanwhile, he's clearly
occupying political terrain vacated by Sistani.
Sistani may be forced by the whole crisis to be
more emphatic - something that is totally against his
instincts and education. Luizard from the French CNRS
has just returned from Qom. He says popular rumors had
it that Sistani was leaving Najaf for London just as the
Americans intensified the siege of Najaf: "People were
saying that Sistani's illness was very convenient, his
excuse for not taking a stand." The whole thing smacks
of history repeating itself - as farce. Luizard points
out that in 1924, the British needed a constituent
assembly to legitimize their occupation, while Shi'ite
religious leaders had issued their anti-occupation
fatwas. Today, the Americans play the same game:
"They need a parliament, even non-elected, to legitimize
the institutional edifice they erected." Luizard was
impressed by how both Iranians and Iraqis are carefully
scrutinizing Sistani's every move on this matter.
Muqtada's win-win scenario A measure
of the effect of the various fatwas issued by the
ayatollahs is that by last Saturday, no fewer than 4,000
Iraqi security forces in Najaf were reported to have
defected to Muqtada's Mehdi Army. Officials at the Iraqi
Ministry of Defense admitted, for example, that "more
than 100 Iraqi national guardsmen and a battalion of
Iraqi soldiers chose to quit rather than attack fellow
Iraqis".
The media really do not know what is
happening on the ground. The only journalists sort of
covering Najaf are embedded with the Pentagon. It's easy
to identify another US design as it fits a common
pattern. The siege of Najaf was planned months ago. The
Pentagon would not want unembedded, "unreliable" media -
Arab and Western - covering the full extent of what
Iraqis are describing as a "bloodbath".
AlJazeera has been expelled from Baghdad by the
Allawi regime - but it keeps breaking news from Najaf
via stringers' reports and amateur videos. Everyone else
was also ordered out of Najaf practically at gunpoint by
Allawi's government. Reporters Without Borders, based in
Paris, has condemned "the totally unacceptable
imposition of an information blackout," it says. "The
presence of journalists on the spot is indispensable as
the worst atrocities are always committed in the absence
of witnesses."
But Muqtada keeps popping up on
alJazeera. He revealed, for instance, how he had asked
interim Iraqi Vice President Ibrahim Jaafari - the
leader of a minor faction of the Shi'ite Dawa Party - to
resign. Jaafari, who is one of the least unpopular
members of Allawi's government, said "no" - for now. But
he also clearly wants the Americans out of Najaf. "I
call for multinational forces to leave Najaf and for
only Iraqi forces to remain there."
Muqtada
reveals his progress as a canny political operator when
he declares on alJazeera that "Najaf has triumphed over
imperialism and imperial hubris". Many merchants in
Najaf may blame Muqtada because their business -
depending on religious pilgrimage - has come to a halt.
And some clerics in Iran - though not the top ayatollahs
- may be keeping their distance from Muqtada and the
Mehdi Army. But the ayatollahs recognize that the scene
is set: if any harm is done to the Imam Ali Shrine, the
ripples would be felt across Iraq and the whole Muslim
world.
Muqtada remains on the political
offensive. He and his array of spokesmen are calling for
a United Nations investigation into the American siege
of Najaf, as well as a UN force capable of taking
control of the city. He's in a win-win situation.
Whatever happens to him, says Luizard, "He at least will
have achieved the religious legitimacy he didn't have,
as well as prevented the involvement of the whole
Shi'ite community."
Not bad for someone who is
already the epitome of an Iraqi nationalist and popular
leader fighting the Bush administration's colonial
adventure. This is the way an occupation ends: with a
Shi'ite jihad charging it of being "worse than Saddam".
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