It is called the Valley of Peace, the vast
cemetery adjacent to the Imam Ali Shrine in the Shi'ite
holy city of Najaf. For more than a thousand years, the
faithful have been buried here to be close to the imam.
This August, it is a Valley of Death for hundreds of
Iraqi civilians, foreign soldiers as well as Iraqis
fighting US Marines, army, Special Forces and Iraqi
National Guard and police units.
As of Thursday,
US Marines and members of the Medhi Army, a militia
loyal to the popular anti-US Shi'ite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr, were locked in a tense standoff after the
leader refused to leave the shrine, despite earlier
agreeing to disarm his militia and withdraw. In
response, the Iraq government said that Muqtada was
facing his "final hours" before a military strike.
The most recent carnage was foreshadowed by
events last April when the US-dominated Coalition
Provisional Authority was formally in charge but
"consulting" with the US-appointed Iraqi Governing
Council. Members of the Medhi Army turned the cemetery
into a weapons "warehouse" and firebase for attacks
against foreign military forces. Wary of inciting a
major uprising should the mosque suffer war damage, US
forces agreed to pull back and let the Iraqi Governing
Council and moderate Shi'ite leaders negotiate a
ceasefire and subsequent withdrawal and demobilization
of the Medhi Army members, leaving control of the city
to reconstituted Iraqi security personnel.
As
August began and the outside temperature flared, so,
too, did tempers, and eventually combat. US military
commanders and spokespersons for the new Iraqi interim
government accused Muqtada's militia of violating the
April agreement by rearming instead of disbanding and
attacking police personnel and installations. Reporters
accompanying US troops described close-quarter combat in
the Valley of Peace, with Muqtada's militia displaying
improved discipline and small-unit tactics. Heavy armor
in the form of Abram tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles
seized the center of the old town and threw a cordon
around the mosque area as thousands of residents fled.
Once more, however, the decisive tactical battle
has not taken place. And in this instance, it is not
going too far to assert this battle can never take place
if Washington and the rest of the West have any
pretensions of long-term peaceful relations with Baghdad
and the Islamic world. In effect, when the Coalition
Provisional Authority and the occupying armies failed to
deliver both basic services and real democracy after
Saddam Hussein fell, the foreigners relinquished the
initiative to Muqtada - and did so to an extent far
surpassing conditions affecting the major towns in the
Sunni triangle. In turn, the provisional authority
handed the Iraqi interim government the same inferior
hand.
View from the Arab 'street' Some
outsiders have suggested using Iraqi commandos to go
into the mosque and clear the premises of weapons,
ammunition and fighters. Iraq's Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi, for all his early tough talk, seems to recognize
this would be disastrous. No matter what the US, United
Nations or Iraqi government officials say, the Arab
"street" believes that the current Baghdad regime
possesses only nominal sovereignty as it is a creation
of and is maintained by infidel countries. Thus the
blame for any attack on or any damage to the Imam Ali
Shrine, regardless of which side or which nationality is
responsible, will automatically fall on the US. The fact
that some in the new Baghdad government and a
significant bloc in the 1,100-member national conference
convened in the capital have joined moderate Shi'ite
clerics - including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani from
his London hospital - in calling for negotiations with
Muqtada, simply reinforces the constraints on military
activity in Najaf.
US standing in Iraq and the
Islamic world is hostage to another reality over which
Washington has even less control: the health and
well-being of Muqtada himself.
Last April, the
Coalition Provisional Authority was intent on arresting
or killing Muqtada. Defiantly, the cleric dressed in
Islamic funeral white and spoke forcefully about his
impending martyrdom. As the August uprising gathered
momentum, Muqtada again reverted to the language of and
welcomed his prospective martyrdom in jihad, even though
US commanders had completely dropped their April
rhetoric and Allawi had tried to entice Muqtada into the
political process. As it is, Muqtada was said to have
sustained minor wounds while visiting militia
strongpoints in Najaf.
A failure of
reconstruction It is facile to say that Muqtada
is an Iraqi problem. His current appeal and resulting
power rests on his opposition to the general presence of
foreign troops in Iraq and their particular presence in
Iraq's Shi'ite holy cities. This popularity among the
now well-armed, unemployed, poverty-stricken population
in Baghdad's Sadr City poses the classic challenge to
the stability of any government susceptible to someone
willing and able to manipulate the masses for his own
ends. The dilemma is harder to resolve when the
"legitimate" government cannot provide services, cannot
provide security, and is considered to be a pawn of or
otherwise is identified with an alien authority and
culture.
As of August, Iraq remains, and is
largely perceived to be an artificial creation of the
Bush administration and the US Congress and heavily
reliant on 160,000 foreign troops. But like so many
creations, its development and eventual maturation
cannot be predicted, let alone controlled. The meeting
of the national conference in Baghdad, postponed for two
weeks and enlarged because of under-representation of
ethnic and religious groups, has been roiled by events
in Najaf and may have to be extended to get through its
main task of choosing the 100 individuals for the
advisory and constitutional drafting assembly that will
oversee the interim government until elections in
January.
Among Washington's justifications for
the continued presence of foreign military forces is the
need to stabilize Iraq. Yet the presence of foreign
military forces is a major cause of the instability. The
resolution lies not in Najaf but in Baghdad, in
simultaneously disarming the militia elements and
significantly improving basic economic, health, and
educational levels (not just "opportunities") among the
inhabitants of Sadr City.
Only then will Najaf's
cemetery again become the Valley of Peace.
Dan Smith is a military affairs
analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, a retired US army
colonel and a senior fellow on Military Affairs at the
Friends Committee on National Legislation.
