The facade of Shi'ite unity
crumbling By Sami Moubayed
DAMASCUS - The violent demonstrations in
Basra, Iraq's second city, last week, which led to
the destruction of the newly opened Iranian
consulate, surprisingly received no more than a
passing mention in the Arab and Western press.
The incident could be seen as a chilling
reminder of the 1979 storming of the US Embassy in
Tehran during the Islamic revolution, with the
Iranians getting a dose of their own medicine.
The demonstrations were led by Shi'ite
followers of anti-Iranian Ayatollah Mahmud
al-Hasani, making the event particularly strange
since everybody has the perception that the
Shi'ites - all Shi'ites - are loyal to Iran.
This is what King Abdullah II of Jordan
says. This is what
Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak said earlier this year in an interview
with Al-Arabiyya TV, causing an uproar within the
Shi'ite community of Iraq. He said that the
Shi'ites of the Arab world were more loyal to Iran
than they were to their respective countries.
The demonstrations in Basra proved the
Egyptian president wrong.
Hasani is a
Karbala-based cleric who is known in Iraq for his
loud anti-Americanism and anti-Iranism. His
ultimate goal, like all men of religion, is to
establish an Iran-like Islamic theocracy in Iraq,
but independent of Iranian influence.
He
has never welcomed Iranian meddling in Iraqi
affairs, or the great influence that the mullahs
of Tehran have over politicians inside the Iraqi
Shi'ite community. His supporters, which included
many women, stormed the Iranian consulate,
destroying parts of it, setting fire to its annex,
then bringing down the Iranian flag and replacing
it with the Iraqi one.
The residents of
Basra, although Shi'ite, still cannot forget or
forgive Iran for repeatedly shelling their city
during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988. This time,
their anger was a result of an offensive remark,
made by a Shi'ite cleric from Lebanon named Ali
Kourani, on Iranian satellite TV.
The
Iranian state-run channel Al-Kawthar (which has
Arabic broadcasts) has a lot of viewers in Iraq.
It is the second-most popular channel, used
heavily by Iran to boost Iranian influence among
ordinary Iraqis.
The Iraqi Shi'ites were
shocked when Kourani came out and strongly
condemned Hasani, saying that he was not an
authority on Islam. He was being used by Israel to
tarnish the image of Islam, Kourani said. The
Lebanese cleric also mocked Hasani, accusing him
of fabricating stories related to the "hidden
Imam" (who is revered in Shi'ite Islam). Kourani
said that Hasani claimed to know the "hidden Imam"
and drink tea with him. Kourani added that Hasani
said that the "hidden Imam" was his
brother-in-law.
Hasani's office issued a
statement asking the channel to apologize and
bring Kourani on another talk-show to apologize
before his Iraqi audience. He also asked the
Iranian government to apologize, warning that if
no apology came shortly "we will leave it to our
people to decide what is suitable to defend their
religious leader".
Hasani is relatively
unknown to the West. In October 2003, he made
headlines, however, when his men battled with US
troops in Karbala. He is, not surprisingly, loyal
to the young rebel-turned cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Like Muqtada, he is opposed to both the Americans
and the Iranians. He wants a free Iraq,
independent from all outside influence, whether by
friend or enemy.
He has refused the
partition of Iraq into mini-states and the
granting to the Shi'ites of a state in the south,
similar to the Kurdish one in the north. This has
been greatly advocated by Iran and its allies in
Iraq, but turned down by Muqtada, who insists on a
unified Iraq. Both men also refuse to label
themselves as Shi'ite nationalists, claiming that
they are also Iraqi nationalist and Arab
nationalists.
Also, Muqtada and Hasani
criticize Shi'ite clerics who take orders from
Tehran, such as Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of
the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (SCIRI). Those who take orders from the
outside, they claim, must practice obedience to
the outside. Hakim's group was created by the
Iranians in the early 1980s and has been funded by
them ever since, much to the displeasure of
Muqtada.
The young rebel, and Hasani, were
appalled when Hakim used his Badr Organization,
the military arm of the SCIRI, to fight against
the Iraqi Army during the Iran-Iraq War. His
commitment and loyalty was more to Iranian
Shi'ites than to his own country's army. On
another level, Hakim and Muqtada are natural
contenders for leadership of the Shi'ite
community. Hakim commands the urban rich and
middle class, while Muqtada is leader of the urban
poor.
In 2003, when coalition forces
searched the home of Hasani in Karbala, it
provoked great Shi'ite anger. His men fought on
the side of Muqtada during his war against the
Americans and former Iraqi prime minister, Iyad
Allawi, in 2004. The grand ayatollah of Iraq, Ali
al-Sistani (who is with Iran and opposed to both
Hasani and Muqtada), advised the Americans and
Allawi against arresting Hasani, saying that this
would inflate his image in the eyes of ordinary
Iraqis and transform him into a national leader.
Sistani, it must be noted, intervened on
the behalf of Muqtada in 2004 to end the war with
Allawi's troops and the US Army. He was never,
however, close to the young cleric. He is
unimpressed by Muqtada's revolutionary approach,
claiming that it senselessly cost the Shi'ites a
number of lives, and sees Muqtada as an
inexperienced young stalwart struggling to assume
a role that is greater than him and too difficult
for him to play. He prefers to deal with wiser and
older clerics, like Hakim, much to Muqtada's
displeasure.
Also, given Muqtada's disdain
for Iran, he is not too fond of Sistani, but would
never dare say it. Sistani is a natural-born
Iranian citizen who speaks Arabic with a Persian
accent. Many say that Sistani is pro-Iranian. The
reality, however, is that Iran is pro-Sistani.
Sistani's equals in religious standing and
authority in the Shi'ite community are Ayatollah
Ali Montazeri and the current grand ayatollah of
Iran, Hussein Ali Khamenei. This towering standing
in Iran, and his natural sympathy towards Iranian
ambitions in Iraq, all put him at odds with both
Muqtada and Hasani.
In June 2003, Muqtada
and Sistani worked out an agreement to alternate
preaching at Friday prayers in Karbala among their
supporters. Muqtada broke this agreement a month
later, saying that Sistani's preachers were wrong
and unqualified. Muqtada went on provoking
demonstrations in Karbala in 2003, as part of the
inter-Shi'ite struggle over the shrines of Islam
in the city, in which Muqtada claimed that he was
the most worthy of the task.
Crime around
mosques created a clear security gap, resulting in
direct intervention by Iraqi troops, while US
troops stood in the perimeter, searching incoming
vehicles for guns and explosives. The entire
campaign was designated against Muqtada and
Hasani. On September 9, 2003, the Americans raided
Hasani's home, while the Iraqi police refused to
participate, fearing retaliation. Three men
protesting the raid of Hasani's home were shot.
This says volumes about the following of
Muqtada and Hasani and what they can do if they
wish, to divide the Shi'ite community. The
Shi'ites are acutely aware of their own divisions,
but always are very careful about not showing them
- until recently - to give the impression that
after so many years of oppression under Saddam
Hussein they are united and strong.
This
image started to shatter when Shi'ite politicians
refused to endorse the candidacy of former prime
minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and reached a climax
during the raid on the Iranian consulate.
Before that, the Shi'ite community had
been held together by three forces: Islam, Iran
and Sistani. These three factors downplayed
inter-Shi'ite differences when they occurred, and
forced ambitious young clerics like Muqtada to act
wise and not publicize his feud with veteran
Shi'ites like Hakim.
Sistani played a very
important role in getting the Shi'ites to
participate in the first parliamentary elections
after the invasion, propping up his loyalist
Jaafari as premier. He also was the driving force
behind the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the
grouping of parties that preaches Shi'ite
political Islam. His image on posters during
election campaigns is enough to get any candidate
voted into office.
All the same, the
strong tension exists within the UIA over the
degree of Iranian influence needed in Iraq
(between Muqtada and the Da'wa Party on one front,
and the SCIRI on the other), but these tensions
were always downplayed by Sistani.
Muqtada
is a fairly new addition to the UIA. When the
Sunnis entered the political game once again in
2005, the UIA increasingly relied on him to win
votes in the slums and ghettos of Baghdad, to
counter-balance the Sunni vote. He has greatly
strengthened his alliance with the Da'wa Party,
the oldest political Islamic group in Iraq, and
made friends with Jaafari, who led a Syria-based
branch of the movement in the 1980s, refusing to
become a stooge for Tehran.
Jaafari,
Muqtada and Hasani share similar views on
anti-federalism, Arabism, respect and reservations
toward Iran. They collectively defeated the SCIRI
(and Iran's) candidate for the premiership in
February - Hakim. It was Muqtada's last-minute
vote that tipped the scale in favor of Jaafari,
but precisely because of his alliance with
Muqtada, Jaafari was asked to step down two months
later because Muqtada angered the Kurds, the
Sunnis and secular Shi'ites because of his views.
For all these reasons, Sistani is not too
fond of Muqtada and clerics like Hasani. This
might explain why the Sistani-backed Kourani
criticized Hasani in such a manner on Al-Kawthar
TV. This also explains why Muqtada's supporters
flew into a fit of rage at the remarks. When
looked at from this angle, it can translate into
an undeclared and indirect Sistani vs Muqtada
feud.
Muqtada knows his limits and
realizes that he is by no means half as powerful
or influential as Sistani. Nor are the other "big"
ayatollahs of Iraq, Mohammad Fayyad, Husayn Bashir
al-Najafi and Mohammad Said al-Hakim.
But
an issue that must seriously be considered now is
Sistani's age (76). If he suddenly departs the
scene, or is killed, what would be the fate of the
Iraqi Shi'ites, and Iran's influence in Iraqi
politics?
The UIA might fall apart, given
its rising divisions during Jaafari's tenure as
prime minister. The influence of the SCIRI would
be somewhat reduced, but never eliminated, due to
the patronage and popularity of Hakim and his men.
The only person to see it as a blessing in
disguise would be Muqtada. He would rise in the
clerical and political establishments, flexing his
muscles to become the all-Shi'ite leader he dreams
about.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian
political analyst.
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