THE ROVING
EYE Martyrdom or victory for
Muqtada By Pepe Escobar
As another inevitable result of the "smoke them
out" diplomacy of the Bush administration and Iraqi
Premier Riyadh Malawi, untold damage is being done in the
Muslim world: US Apache helicopters and AC-130 gunships
bombing the vast holy grounds of the Wadi al-Salam
cemetery, while the main shopping street leading to the
Imam Ali Shrine - as well as most of Najaf's old city -
lies in ruins. And in an overlapping graphic display, US
forces now also occupy much of the 2-million-strong Sadr
City, the vast Shi'ite slum in Baghdad.
The
Iyad Allawi government has warned Muqtada al-Sadr, who heads
the resistance in Najaf, at least three times:
surrender, or else. Muqtada's answer, faithful to
centuries of Shi'ite martyrdom, cannot be anything but
"martyrdom or victory". Muqtada's spokesman in Najaf,
Shaikh Ahmad al-Shaibani, still insists he wants a peace
agreement - "not an ultimatum". But "peace" is something
the former US Central Intelligence Agency asset Allawi
simply cannot deliver, because its precondition, for
Muqtada, is the US Army leaving Najaf.
Muqtada knows that the longevity of the standoff
(the most recent one began on August 5) is directly
proportional to his enhanced status as a resistance
icon, and Allawi's loss of face. And if the Imam Ali
Shrine is stormed, as his Baghdad spokesman Abdel Hadi
al-Darraji puts it, there will be "a revolution all over
Iraq".
Fighting continued on Monday around the
shrine, with militia loyal to Muqtada in control of the
mosque. US tanks pulled back slightly from positions
they held on Sunday as close as 800 meters from the
compound of the shrine, but earlier promises by Muqtada
to vacate the shrine appear, once again, to be ringing
false.
Muqtada's
agenda has been spelled out in fine
detail for 16 months now: one just has to grab a batch
of video compact discs of his sermons, selling for US$1
apiece in Baghdad and the Shi'ite south. While Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani had chosen to "collaborate" -
as Muqtada calls it - with the occupiers and their
now-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA),
Muqtada, already in the autumn of 2003, was actively
engaged in sabotaging the dream of the
neo-conservatives: the fire sale of Iraqi assets
enshrined in the interim constitution to be adopted by
the transitional - Allawi's - government.
Former US proconsul L Paul Bremer - who thought he could
take Muqtada out with military muscle, and failed - had
let down disfranchised Shi'ite Iraqi masses in the
first place. Muqtada, on the other hand, not only
dressed them in black, gave them cranky Kalashnikovs and
a place in his swelling Mehdi Army: he gave them a role
as participants in a sort of shadow rebuilding of Iraq -
the real thing, not US-inspired rhetoric coupled with
disappearing funds. From Baghdad to Basra, Sadr centers
were and still are heavily involved in setting up
emergency generators, collecting garbage, fixing power
and phone lines and directing traffic, making everyday
life for Iraqis less miserable.
Chalmers
Johnson, the author of Blowback and The
Sorrows of Empire, would qualify the whole process
as - what else - blowback: if Bremer and the CPA had not
been so obsessed in transforming Iraq into a paradise
for corporate looting and had provided security, job
opportunities and functioning services to most Iraqis,
Muqtada and his Mehdi Army would not even qualify as an
historic footnote.
Muqtada's Iraq
What Muqtada wants Bremer could not possibly
deliver, and much less Allawi. Muqtada refuses
any "collaboration" with Allawi's government, which is regarded
by himself and many Iraqis as a US-appointed puppet
regime. The class-struggle angle is also inescapable: rich,
exiled, businessman with dodgy espionage links (Allawi) calls
a foreign-occupier army to smash a disfranchised urban
proletariat (the Mehdi Army) offered a social role by a
charismatic cleric.
Unlike Sistani and the
Shi'ite political parties, Muqtada insists the
precondition for any serious political process is the
end of the occupation - and that's the main reason for
his popularity. Muqtada would only admit foreign troops
in Iraq if they were controlled by the United Nations.
What is the shape of a future Iraq in Muqtada's
mind? Muqtada is above all an Iraqi nationalist -
another reason for his popularity, even among Sunni
Muslims. He wants no federalism, but a strong central
government with a strong military (but with no Ba'athist
officers: that's a tough call). This would be an Iraq
ruled by a Shi'ite majority, but independent from Iran,
and with none of its shades of Islamic revolution. Well,
not that many, because Muqtada is in favor of
velayat-e-faqih, or the
predominance of theological power over secular power. So
Iraq's democracy a la
Muqtada would be relatively similar to
Iran's, with an Iraqi equivalent of Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruling over an equivalent of an
elected President Mohammad Khatami and a parliament also
elected by universal suffrage.
Allawi simply
cannot swallow any of this because his brief - as a
US-appointed prime minister without a parliament -
is to implement what Bremer could not, and Muqtada is in
the way. The administration of US President George
W Bush badly needs sprawling military bases in Iraq and a
model corporate heaven in the Middle East. Bush is
even usurping the amazing progress of the Iraqi soccer
team in the Athens Olympics for his campaign-trail speeches
- they are into the semifinals. But not even a miracle -
an Iraqi soccer Olympic medal - would likely prevent
what could go down in history as the 2004 Najaf tragedy.
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