[Peace-discuss] The situation in Iraq

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The combination of US propaganda and the dangers British and US reporters face 
in Iraq mean that we get very little unbiased information about what is 
happening in the country that the US has been destroying for more than 15 years. 
  For example, few of our fellow citizens know that the election of January 
2005, which the Bush administration said after the fact was a result of their 
policy, was in fact forced on the US by the (non-violent) resistance of the 
majority Shia community under the direction of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. 
Here Juan Cole, long one of the best informed observers of what is actually 
happening in Iraq, discusses the current situation. --CGE]


	Friday, May 23, 2008
	Will Sistani Declare Jihad on US?

Hamza Hendawi and Qassim Abdul Zahra of AP get the scoop: Their sources in Najaf 
tell them that young Shiite men belonging to the "Troops of the Ayatollahs" 
(Jund al-Marja`iyyah) militia that protects the leading Shiite clerics in the 
Middle Euphrates have been imploring Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani for a fatwa or 
formal legal ruling about whether it is permissible to attack US and other 
foreign troops. Hendawi and Abdul Zahra report that whereas in the past Sistani 
had dodged the question or given a vague answer, in recent months he has begun 
verbally affirming to visitors that such attacks on foreign occupation troops 
are permissible.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki met with Sistani on Thursday to discuss the 
security situation. Maliki and a government spokesman tried to spin the grand 
ayatollah's position as one of pure support for al-Maliki's assault on the Mahdi 
Army. Al-Sharq al-Awsat writes in Arabic that Sistani's brother-in-law, in 
Najaf, said that the Grand Ayatollah does not enter into details, but generally 
supports a rule of law and obedience to the government.

But Sistani's representative in Karbala, Abdul Mahdi Karbala'i, had said last 
week that Sistani was opposed to al-Maliki's attempt to disarm the Mahdi Army, 
and also opposed his threat to exclude the Sadr Movement from running for office 
in the forthcoming provincial elections. (Full quote at end-- scroll down).

So, the questions are, "why" and "why now?"

I can only speculate, since Sistani isn't issuing communiques that would explain 
what is on his mind. But let us look at the context.

First, Sistani was under a lot of pressure from his Shiite followers to denounce 
the US siege, blockade and aerial bombing of the civilian district of Sadr City 
in East Baghdad, which went on for weeks. People were actually lacking in food. 
And, apartment buildings were incinerated. The full horror of the siege was 
carefully kept from the American public, but the Shiites of Iraq knew about it 
all right. I think that the brutality of the US intervention against the Shiite 
masses, and the risk that his silence would produce a backlash against him in 
favor of Muqtada al-Sadr, may have helped impel Sistani toward this militancy. 
Aerial bombardment of civilian areas as a tactic has increased significantly 
this spring.

Americans tend to dismiss the aerial bombardments, in which civilians are often 
killed, as the cost of doing business in a war zone. But many Iraqis really, 
really mind these killings and you can only imagine what Sistani thinks of them. 
Likewise, while the incident of the US soldier using the Qur'an for firing 
practice only happened recently and wouldn't be the impetus for Sistani's new 
militancy, such desecrations have occurred before and the hatred of Islam by US 
military figures like Gen. Boykin is well known.

Second, as Steve Chapman points out, the American Right is clearly trying to get 
up a war on Iran by rather fantastically painting it as a "threat". Sistani is 
an Iranian, born in Mashhad in 1930, who resided there until late 1951. He does 
not like the Khomeinist system of government. But since Sistani has seen what 
Bush's tender mercies have done to Iraq, he must be alarmed by the idea that 
Washington might bestow the same "liberation" on his native land. Obviously, the 
US is in a worse position to attack Iran if it lacks Iraq as a base, and one way 
of forestalling Cheney's mad bombers would be to try to force the US out of Iraq.

Third, PM Nuri al-Maliki has several times expressed the conviction that the 
Iraqi army could handle Iraq by the end of 2008. If he is telling Sistani that, 
and Sistani believes it, then the Grand Ayatollah may feel that there is 
increasingly no down side to multinational forces leaving Iraq. Al-Maliki's 
campaigns in Basra, Sadr City and Mosul were probably intended as a 
demonstration that the Iraqi army can handle the country on its own. The 
intrepid Leila Fadil reports from Basra that al-Maliki has in fact achieved 
greater security and trade in Iraq's ports through his Assault of the Knights 
operation. When al-Maliki and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim feel strong enough 
domestically, their first order of business will be to vastly reduce American 
military influence. They represent the Islamic Mission (Da`wa) Party and the 
Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (founded by Ayatollah Khomeini), after all. 
There is likely a limit to this marriage of convenience.

Sistani also follows American politics, and he knows that the US is 
transitioning away from Bush, so he may see an opportunity to push the new 
administration in a different direction.

I have all along believed that Sistani would ultimately issue a fatwa saying 
that it was illegitimate for there to continue to be foreign troops on Iraqi 
soil. I think he would have gone in that direction if Bush had not given in on 
the January, 2005, elections. But he had been concerned about a resurgence of 
the Baath, about the rise of the Salafi Jihadis (radical Sunnis, which are in my 
view mistakenly called 'al-Qaeda'), and about the weakness of the Shiite government.

Ironically, the more success the Americans have in reducing sectarian violence 
and strengthening the Iraqi state, the more likely it is that Sistani will put 
his foot down about the foreign military presence.

This likelihood is one reason I find it difficult to take seriously the plans of 
the Pentagon and the American Right for a long-term US military presence in 
Iraq. I just don't think the Shiites will put up with it. And, the constant 
bombardment of the small British contingent down at the Basra airport likely 
points to the fate of any division of US troops left in the country.

Those tempted to dismiss the possibility that a frail old man in Najaf can get 
up a social movement powerful enough to thwart US plans should read Michael 
Schwartz's essay at Tomdispatch.com on the way Iraqi popular movements got in 
the way of the Project for a New American Century.

The American Right often tries to make an analogy between occupied Japan after 
WW II and occupied Iraq. It is a highly flawed analogy, as the prescient John 
Dower pointed out before the invasion. He pointed to the legitimacy of the US 
occupation of Japan, acknowledged by the world and by the Japanese. That is what 
the US lacks in Iraq. As long as Sistani does not give The Fatwa, Washington can 
go on pretending that it has that legitimacy. But it does not, and the fatwa, if 
and when it comes, will definitively declare the emperor to be without clothes. 
It would be as though Hirohito had called on Japanese to expel US troops. Can 
you imagine? And, the Japanese were afraid of the Soviet Union and China, which 
is one reason they put up with US bases in Okinawa. The Iraqi Shiites are not 
afraid of anyone in the region, and the American argument to them that they 
should be afraid of Iran (and that Washington will protect them from Tehran) 
just strikes them as silly.

Sistani's web site says he was born in August of 1930, so he is 77. He is said 
not to be in great health. He may feel that the expulsion fatwa would be the 
crowning achievement of his career. Certainly, it would restore the respect for 
the grand ayatollah in the Shiite south, which has slipped as a resentful 
population has turned to the Sadr Movement.

Sistani's two likely successors, the Afghan Ishaq Fayyad and the Pakistani 
Bashir Najafi, may have different views than Sistani on this matter. It is hard 
to know. I believe Ishaq Fayyad may be more pro-American, based on anecdotes I 
have from an eyewitness. In contrast, I know Najafi gave a sermon in which he 
bitterly attacked the US for having allowed the Shiites to be massacred by 
Saddam in spring of 1991, after Bush senior had called on the Iraqi people to 
rise up.

Sistani has all along expressed his discomfort with a foreign military 
occupation of Iraq. The first public statement he made after the fall of Saddam, 
which I paraphrased at that time at IC, went like this:


' *Al-Hayat for April 18 [2003] has an interview with Grand Ayatollah Ali 
Sistani of Najaf. It says that Sistani "affirmed his rejection of any foreign 
power after the war to which the country had been subjected." His son Muhammad 
Rida Sistani conveyed from his father "his rejection of any foreign power that 
would rule Iraq, emphasizing that he himself would not interfere with the form 
of the national government that the Iraqi people choose to rule the land." He 
said that his father is still in seclusion in Najaf. The son said his father's 
conception of religious leadership was that it must soar above factions and 
parties. He denied that his father had been protected by US troops, saying there 
were local Shiite youth (i.e. the tribesmen) available for the purpose. He 
called for unity among all Muslims--Sunni and Shiite-and among all Iraqis. He 
said he read his father accounts of Shiites attacking Sunni mosques in mixed 
neighborhoods. Grand Ayatollah Sistani immediately denounced such acts as sinful 
and said they should be seen against his own framework of love for the Sunnis 
and giving donations for the building or rebuilding of their mosques. He said 
the Grand Ayatollah had regretted the loooting of libraries, and had said that 
"Iraqi is for the Iraqis. They must administer Iraq, and it is not for them to 
do so under any foreign power." He ended by saying it had been the custom of the 
clerics of early last century to go to battle alongside their children against 
the British occupation. '


Sistani in that last bit was referring to the Iraqi Revolution of 1920 against 
British colonial rule, which was largely Shiite and some leaders of which were 
Shiite clerics such as Shaikh Mahdi al-Khalisi and members of the al-Sadr family 
(yes, those Sadrs). He was announcing, right from 2003, his willingness to lead 
a Shiite revolt if he thought it necessary.

Sistani also invoked the symbology of 1920 in winter 2004 when he was demanding 
that Bush hold open, one-person, one-vote elections in Iraq.


As for al-Maliki's current conflict with the Mahdi Army, Al-Hayat reported (as 
translated by the USG Open Source Center and carried by BBC Monitoring on May 17):

' In a related development, Al-Ubaydi asserted, "all the religious authorities 
do not approve the dissolution of the Al-Mahdi Army; even Al-Sayyid al-Sistani 
does not approve". He pointed out that "Muqtada al-Sadr does not make decisions 
except after consulting the religious authorities and taking their opinion. 
Moreover, the religious authority does not approve the exclusion of the Al-Sadr 
Trend from the political process or from any other process". In his Friday 
sermon, Al-Sistani's representative Shaykh Abd-al-Mahdi al-Karbala'i made a 
reference to this when he said, "The religious authority does not approve the 
exclusion of political components from the political process. This is very 
clear". He went on to say that Al-Sayyid al-Sistani rejected the idea on which 
the government and the occupation are focusing; namely, disarmament because that 
is unacceptable in the current balances that exist. Other sides have armed 
militias within the sight and hearing of the state, such as "The Awakening", 
"Al-Asayish" [Kurdish security force], and others. So why does the government 
focus on the Al-Mahdi Army? He added that some that are close to Al-Sistani's 
office say that the Al-Mahdi Army constitutes a balancing stick regarding what 
is happening in Iraq. Even if the religious authority has reservations on some 
behaviour, it approves that very clearly. Moreover, Al-Sayyid al-Sistani 
personally told Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki indirectly during his first visit 
after assuming power that "The Al-Mahdi Army is your winning card on the 
political level. Do not lose this card". '


But Sistani also had a counter-reading of 1920, which is that the revolt pushed 
the British to depend on Sunnis and so led to Shiites being marginalized for the 
rest of the century. He thought that if the Shiites could avoid a direct 
confrontation with the US, then eventually they would inherit Iraq from it. But 
that scenario depends on the US being willing to go quietly. If it isn't, it may 
get The Fatwa.

http://www.juancole.com/2008/05/will-sistani-declare-jihad-on-us.html