In Iraq's Disorder, the Ayatollahs May Save the Day
By PATRICK E. TYLER
AGHDAD, Iraq ?Men in turbans have seldom fit the profile of rescuers of American foreign policy. But the day may come in Iraq when the majority Shiites save the victory that President Bush is seeking to preserve against a rain of reversals.
With the deaths of two dozen Americans in combat in central Iraq in the last eight weeks, the Bush administration is trying hard to blame desperate Baathists, "dead enders" from Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, criminals and terrorists for the violence. But to step back in Iraq is to see that the Sunni Muslim minority north and west of Baghdad is in the early stages of rebellion. Early sporadic violence has become more concerted every day. There may be no central command, but among the Sunni warrior class, no road map to resistance is needed.
In contrast, the Shiite cities and villages of southern Iraq are relatively quiet ?and it is the Shiites who make up 60 percent of the country's 23 million people. In Najaf, Kerbala and Basra, they are rebuilding their cities side by side with American and British forces. (This may seem illusory in light of the killing of six British soldiers in a southern village, Majar al-Kabir, last month. But unlike the apparently organized rebellion in central Iraq, in Majar al-Kabir the violence was a mob outburst in response to house searches that Shiites felt offended women's modesty.) Mr. Hussein's ubiquitous image has been replaced by fresh portraits of Shiite imams, present and past.
Iraq's Shiites are a diverse mixture of secularists, Islamic moderates and religious radicals. When democratic elections call the roll in Mesopotamia, it is almost certain that a Shiite will emerge, sooner or later but probably sooner, to take a leading post in a new Iraqi government, perhaps the leading post.
So far, though, the Bush administration seems ambivalent about how close to get to some Shiite leaders, particularly clerics who have had ties to Iran.
The concept of Shiite rule terrifies some administration officials. But other senior officials are pointing out the differences between Iraq's Shiites and their co-religionists in Iran. Besides the revulsion in Iraq over the excesses of the Iranian revolution, there is also a desire among Iraq's Shiites to reach a condominium with the minority Sunnis, Kurds and Turkmen.
A leading administration hawk, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, told a gathering of Shiites that the "tyrannical" portrayal of them, projected by Iran, represents a "false image of Shiites." In a speech in late May, Mr. Wolfowitz recalled that in 1991, when he traveled to the Persian Gulf with James A. Baker III, who was then secretary of state, some people on the plane seemed "to think it would be worse to have a Shiite government in Baghdad than to have Saddam Hussein."
Mr. Wolfowitz asserts that he was not among the Shiite bashers, and is not now. Given his remarks, it is hard to imagine that the Bush administration has not considered that an ayatollah might be Iraq's first postwar leader.
It could take some getting used to and, Mr. Wolfowitz suggested, the West will have to guard against the bigotry that clouds perceptions of Shiites.
A year ago, Bush aides were courting a prominent Shiite leader, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim; the aim was to unite a diverse Iraqi opposition coalition and help make the case for war against Mr. Hussein. But as soon as the worst of the combat ended in April, Ayatollah Hakim's long exile in Iran put him under suspicion as an agent of Tehran. His Badr Brigade militia had been trained and equipped by Iran, and American generals disarmed it and excluded it from cooperation with allied forces, even as Kurdish militias in northern Iraq were treated as allies.
Yet Ayatollah Hakim has been a force of moderation since he returned from exile and encamped at Najaf. There he has aligned himself with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who is Iranian-born and a senior cleric within Shiite Islam.
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