DAMASCUS - Muqtada al-Sadr is certainly
the most interesting politician in Iraq to be
watched in what remains of President George W
Bush's term at the White House, which ends in
January 2009. Bush has said that the US Army would
not leave Iraq as long as he was president.
Muqtada is the single most popular cleric
who will certainly create a headache for the
Americans unless he is killed, arrested or
sidelined by some other Shi'ite cleric.
Until recently, challenging Muqtada in
Shi'ite politics was difficult. He has all the
qualities to excel in the hurly-burly of Shi'ite
politics. He is young, is
defiant and hails from a dynastic Shi'ite family
that earned high respect for challenging the
regime of Saddam Hussein.
He has made a
name for himself as an ardent nationalist by
leading two rebellions against the Americans in
2004, and he then entered the political arena,
occupying parliamentary seats and ministerial
posts in the cabinet of Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki.
He runs charity organizations
all over the country, endearing him to the urban
poor, and operates the Mehdi Army that protects
the Shi'ite community - his Shi'ite community -
from Sunnis, Kurds, Americans, Iranians and other
Shi'ites.
So strong is Muqtada that he in
effect forced the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani
to withdraw from the world of politics, claiming
that he was being overshadowed and ignored by a
young generation of clerics led by Muqtada.
Enter Mahmud al-Hasani The
golden days of Muqtada, however, might be
numbered: a new cleric by the name of Mahmud
al-Hasani is challenging him in Shi'ite politics.
Born in 1960, Hasani is a relative
newcomer to the world of Shi'ite politics in Iraq.
He studied under Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, the
father of Muqtada, before the latter was killed by
Saddam in 1999. He also studied civil engineering
at Baghdad University and graduated in 1987.
Under Saddam, he hailed the elder Sadr at
a Friday prayer meeting and was arrested and
sentenced to death. The sentence was never carried
out and he remained in Saddam's jails until April
2003.
Based in Karbala since then, he made
something of a name for himself after the US
invasion as one of the loudest anti-American
Shi'ites. However, when US-Shi'ite relations were
at their peak, during the early days of the
post-Saddam order, Hasani was neither dangerous
nor particularly significant, especially when
compared with Muqtada or Sistani.
Hasani
portrayed himself as the ultimate authority in
Shi'ite Islam, often claiming that he was more
knowledgeable than Sistani himself, a difficult
task given Sistani's accepted supremacy. Hasani
challenged Sistani and other veteran clerics to
talk shows and written correspondences, but nobody
listened to him or took him seriously.
Anti-American to the bone, he called on
his followers to fight the occupation forces at a
time when Sistani was preaching "honorable
cooperation" with the Americans and saying that
military might would not force the US to leave
Iraq.
Hasani is responsible for attacks on
coalition forces and undermining the
reconstruction of Iraq. His first high-profile
attack was in October 2003, when he organized an
ambush in Karbala that led to the death of two
Iraqi policemen and four coalition soldiers.
In February 2004, his men attacked Spanish
forces in Diwaniyah. At the time, press reports
from the US Army said he was believed to be hiding
in Karbala while dressed as a woman. Coalition
troops placed a US$50,000 bounty on his head.
Hasani's defiance brought him into a
temporary honeymoon with Muqtada, the son of his
mentor, who was leading an anti-American crusade
of his own. Hasani's men fought alongside the
Sadrists during their confrontations with the US
Army in April 2004. Both were saved from the
hangman's noose by Sistani, who told the Americans
that arresting them or killing them would make
them iconic heroes in the Shi'ite community.
The two men at this stage has many things
in common as both were opposed to Iranian meddling
in Iraqi affairs. Both of them have the ultimate
goal of creating a theocracy in Iraq, modeled on
the Iranian model but free of Iranian influence.
Hasani goes his own way Hasani
is very critical of Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, the
leader of the Shi'ite Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), because he is
funded by Iran and operated from Iran against the
Iraqi army during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88.
He is also critical of Hakim's dream of
establishing an autonomous Shi'ite district in
southern Iraq, similar to Iraqi Kurdistan. In
recent months, Hasani has become more powerful
because he has created his own militia, called the
Husayn Army (modeled after the SCIRI's Badr
Brigade and Muqtada's Mehdi Army).
Hasani
claims to protect Shi'ites who are loyal to him,
and in the process has done his share of sectarian
violence, against both Sunnis and other Shi'ites,
since February.
In June, Hasani made
headlines when his followers stormed the newly
opened Iranian Consulate in Basra in the
Shi'ite-dominated south. They burned it down and
replaced the Iranian flag with an Iraqi one.
The reason, Hasani's office explained, was
a controversial interview given by a Lebanese
cleric named Ali al-Kourani to the Iranian
satellite channel Al-Kawthar. Kourani, who is
close to Sistani, made fun of Hasani because the
latter claimed that he drank tea with the revered
Mehdi (an awaited leader in Shi'ite Islam). On his
well-informed website on Iraqi affairs, Professor
Juan Cole quoted an occupation official describing
Hasani as "a mixture of a criminal and a lunatic
who believes he has a hotline to God".
More recently, Hasani has fallen out with
both Sistani and Muqtada. He was enraged by
Muqtada's decision to join the parliamentary
elections in 2005 and again in 2006, claiming that
the current Iraqi parliament is "illegal". He was
further alienated from Muqtada when the latter had
his men join the coalition cabinet of Maliki in
May.
Hasani operates a website that he
uses to promote his political and religious views.
It contains his daily schedule one month in
advance, what prayers he uses on a daily basis,
and downloadable excerpts from the Holy Koran. It
claims that Hasani is "Wali Amr al-Muslimeen" (In
Charge of Muslims). It follows his name by a
phrase saying: "May God preserve his holy shadow."
On Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Salam
al-Zoubai received a delegation from Hasani's
office to discuss political events in Iraq,
showing just how influential Hasani has become.
Another delegation smiled before cameras as it
visited Sheikh Sami Ajjun, head of the National
Reconciliation Committee.
On the dame day,
Hasani's official spokesman, Dr Asaad al-Khakani,
was kidnapped, along with another senior aide
named Dia al-Din al-Mousawi, by a new militia in
Karbala, arousing the cleric's anger. His website
claimed that "terrorists and murders" kidnapped
Khakani and that he was currently being tortured
for his loyalty to Hasani.
Hasani claims
to have 30,000 followers in Iraq. To show his
power, he ordered his men to demonstrate in large
numbers in August 2005, and they replied promptly
in Baghdad and Karbala. To a great extent, he has
been influenced by the mass marches of Hezbollah
in Lebanon, copied by Muqtada on different
occasions, since 2003.
Hasani wants to
show the world that he has men with guns who are
willing to enforce his power base in the Shi'ite
community. This summer, Hasani demanded that
religious authorities let him preach at the
revered Husayn Shrine. Sistani's men refused even
to let them in.
In 2003, Sistani created a
committee to assign shrine duties and prayer
leadership, headed by his representatives Ahmad
al-Safi and Abd al-Mehdi al-Karbalai. When Hasani
questioned Sistani's authority, clashes broke out
between his forces and those of the ayatollah in
August.
More than 250 of Hasani's men were
arrested and another 10 were killed. His men,
enraged by the battle, took to the streets on
August 16-17 in Karbala, al-Nasriyya and
al-Hillah, demonstrating against Iranian influence
in Iraq and accusing Sistani of being an Iranian
stooge, since he holds Iranian citizenship and no
Iraqi passport.
Hasani's spokesman,
Mustafa al-Thabiti, told Al-Sharqiyah TV that
members of the Karbala Governorate Council (who
were opposed to him) "hold Iranian passports" and
took their orders from Iran. His spokesman added
that Hasani's men would not stand silent and that
more than 500 "martyr seekers" were awaiting his
orders to fight in 10 different Iraqi cities.
For all these reasons, Hasani could become
a serous and dangerous player in Iraqi politics.
Nobody, however, wants him to make a name for
himself because he is at odds with everybody,
including Sunnis, the Americans, Iranians and
other Shi'ites.
His claims to senior
religious authority have made him a laughing stock
for veteran clerics such as Sistani. Although he
operates his own Husayn Army, he does not have
charity organizations in his name, in the manner
operated by Muqtada, and therefore remains obscure
to swaths of grassroots Iraqi Shi'ites.
And even if he were to try to appeal to
ordinary poor Shi'ites from the slums of Baghdad,
Muqtada would oppose him because he would be then
trespassing on Sadrist territory.
Since
Iran does not support him, Hasani's chance of
challenging everybody at once is slim. But this
does not change the fact that Hasani is now a main
player in Iraqi Shi'ite politics. With Sistani
silent and Muqtada on the rise, he can add a lot
of color to Shi'ite politics, and bring about
sharp divisions in the Shi'ite community.
The new battle in Iraq will be between
Hasani and Muqtada.
Sami
Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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