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Zarqawi vs
Sistani
By Ehsan Ahrari
Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has
already emerged as a major terrorist and an
adversary of the United States in Iraq, especially
since he formed a loose association with al-Qaeda.
Now he is making a name for himself as a direct
challenger to Shi'ite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani. In a statement issued on Monday,
Zarqawi said, "We have declared a bitter war
against democracy and all those who seek to enact
it. Democracy is also based on the right to choose
your religion, and that is against the rule of
God." Sistani, on the contrary, has been a
champion for democracy, knowing all along that its
implementation in Iraq will also establish Shi'ite
rule, something no one would have even imagined as
possible while Saddam Hussein was in power.
Sistani's entire involvement in
post-Saddam Iraqi politics has been focused on
challenging the US occupation of his country. Yet
throughout that opposition, he has remained a
positive force for Shi'ites. He rightly read
America's commitment to democracy as genuine, once
Saddam was toppled. However, he did not want the
Americans to stay put in Iraq. The only way to
oust the Americans, he thought, was to play at
their own game: demand an immediate implementation
of democracy. When that did not happen, he did not
fully trust the Americans and made his continued
cooperation with the US forces conditional on the
United Nations' involvement in conducting
elections, due this Sunday.
What helped
Sistani's case was the fact that after toppling
Saddam, the administration of US President George
W Bush found itself left with very limited support
from Europe and Asia. France and Germany not only
remained critics of the continued US occupation,
they also showed no interest in making that
occupation easier or shorter, since helping
Washington to cut down its duration meant
committing their own troops to Iraq. Of the entire
Muslim world, only Jordan and Turkey showed
interest in sending troops to Iraq. However,
Jordan had to back down under threats of
terrorism, and Turkey opted to stay away because
the United States did not want to alienate the
Kurdish population, which groused volubly at the
prospects of any Turkish participation in Iraq.
These intricacies worked beautifully for
Sistani's own strategy. He never took his eyes off
his objective of exploiting the game of democracy
to establish Shi'ite rule in a country where,
although they form the majority of the population,
Shi'ites have for decades been politically
subjugated by Sunnis. Sistani also knew the Bush
administration's fears regarding the emergence of
an Iran-style government. On that point also,
Sistani was quite ingenuous. He has always opposed
the model of vilayat-e-faqih (rule of the
clergy) a la Shi'ite-dominated Iran. He belonged to the
quietist Shi'ite tradition, with an important
modification: while he did not want to become part
of the government, his notion of the separation of
religion and politics bore no resemblance to the
United States' vision of that principle. Sistani
has every intention to serve as a religious guide,
a person who is not part of any ruling groups, but
simply by remaining apart from them he will also
exercise enormous power on heady matters of
governance
of Iraq.
When
another Shi'ite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, openly
defied the US and implicitly challenged the role
of Sistani, the latter did not flinch. He knew all
along what he wanted. He never wanted any personal
glory, only political power for his people. As far
as he was concerned, Muqtada could get some of it
by being very much a part of the Sistani strategy.
And Muqtada finally understood that when he
stopped his running battles with the Americans and
with the Coalition Provisional Authority. From
then on, the power of the Shi'ites has gathered
momentum, with them eager to display their unity
on January 30 through a massive turnout.
Election day is also a day that Iraq's
Sunnis fear most. Zarqawi's strategy is also
straightforward. He knows he cannot stop the
holding of general elections in Iraq. No matter
how much mayhem he creates, he is afraid - and
rightly so - that the Shi'ites will absorb all the
punishment and losses, and will still exercise
their right to vote. Even under the worst possible
conditions, they will emerge as the dominant
ruling group. Zarqawi is also aware that the US is
very much concerned about the emergence of a
legitimate Iraqi government. What that means is
that Sunni Iraqis - or at least a substantial
number of them - must not exercise their right to
vote, thereby creating serious questions about the
legitimacy of the elected government. That is why
he is doing all he can, through terror and
intimidation, to create the minimum possible Sunni
participation.
An important aspect of
Zarqawi's strategy is to terrorize the Shi'ite
population. The Wahhabis have seen the Shi'ites as
heretics and non-Muslims. During the Taliban rule
in Afghanistan, the Wahhabi hatred of Afghani
Shi'ites (Hazaras) was apparent in their periodic
brutalizing of them. However, since the United
States' declaration of its "global war on
terrorism", al-Qaeda is reported to have developed
a palpably pragmatic approach of cooperating with
Iranians to save the lives of its own fighters who
are still on the run.
Considering the fact
that Zarqawi has now affiliated himself with
al-Qaeda - and has recently even changed the name
of his organization from Unification and Jihad to
al-Qaeda in Iraq - his bloodletting of Iraqi
Shi'ites is somewhat bewildering. It is possible
that in his zeal for an all-out war against the US
before the elections he is leaving no stones
unturned. His aforementioned statement is quite
poignant on this issue as well. He said to Iraqis,
"You have to be careful of the enemy's plots that
involve applying democracy in your country and
confront these plots, because they only want to do
so to ... give the rejectionists the rule of Iraq.
And after fighting the Ba'athists ... and the
Sunnis, they will spread their insidious beliefs,
and Baghdad and all the Sunni areas will become
Shi'ite. Even now, the signs of infidelity and
polytheism are on the rise."
In the
ongoing contest between Zarqawi and Sistani, the
latter is likely to emerge as a victor. Sistani
has proved himself to be a political genius in
turning the toppling of Saddam at the hands of a
much-hated foreign power into a seemingly
permanent victory for the Shi'ites. Zarqawi's sole
weapon is his use of terror, which might prove
effective for a short duration, if at all. But if
there is ample Sunni participation, despite
Zarqawi's campaign of terror, the potential for
the development of democracy will become an
important symbolic defeat for him and an equally
significant victory for the wily Sistani.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an
Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent
strategic analyst.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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