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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (93409)	4/14/2003 10:04:50 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

The Mullahs take over. To be expected. There is no law of nature that says this has to turn bad. TWT. washingtonpost.com Shiite Clerics Move to Assume Control in Baghdad By Anthony Shadid Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, April 14, 2003; Page A01 BAGHDAD, April 13 -- Ali Shawki, a Shiite Muslim cleric with the swagger that a gun on each hip brings, strode through the no man's land that Baghdad has become and, in words and action, left little doubt that there's a new authority in town. At the Prophet Muhammad Mosque, where he resides, the 47-year-old Shawki led prayers in a room stuffed with booty confiscated from looters rampaging through the city. His guns stayed on. With an armed retinue -- one guard carried a heavy machine gun with rounds slung around him, bandolier-style -- he pressed the flesh at a health clinic that he had ordered open after it was closed for days by war. He described his plans for the sprawling slum once known as Saddam City: armed patrols at night that he would lead, a curfew by 8 p.m. on the turf he controls, and orders that no gunfire was allowed, which he would broadcast by mosque loudspeaker. "We order people to obey us. When we say stand up, they stand up. When we say sit down, they sit down," Shawki said, his black turban framing the long beard of religious study. "With the collapse of Saddam, the people have turned to the clergy." In this neighborhood on the eastern edge of Baghdad, awash in sewage and littered with trash, the clergy of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority have moved to fill the void left by the ouster of Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party government. With encouragement from their leadership based in Najaf, the Shiite holy city, they have set up about 100 roadblocks to deter looters and put men in charge of safety of hospitals and the security on the streets. Mosques have filled up with confiscated loot, popular committees are being organized by clergy to restore civil services and order and some prayer leaders have taken to patrolling their neighborhoods, forcing bakeries to feed people. The words of the new order are written on the walls. Slogans hastily painted in black convey a less-than-subtle message: "Stealing is forbidden by God." Across the city, graffiti has cast away the 28-year-old name of Saddam City in favor of "Sadr City," in memory of a leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, who was assassinated by Hussein's government in 1999. "Sadr City welcomes you," a young man painted in green today on the neighborhood's entrance along Habibiya Street. To the approval of residents, the clergy claim credit for preventing the bloodshed many feared would erupt in the tattered sector of 2 million people, which for decades bore the brunt of repression wielded by Hussein's government. But the rise of the clerics hints at the formidable challenges that may face any new government in Baghdad: Sunni-Shiite disputes, the specter of warlords seizing and administering their own territory, and the potentially dangerous jockeying for position with U.S. forces that have become the lone power in Baghdad. The clerics are among the first to articulate their postwar intentions: a government shaped, if not controlled, by religious leaders who enjoy respect and authority among Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority. "The clergy are taking over," Maher Abdel-Hassan, a 42-year-old prayer leader in the neighborhood, said with a mix of hope and satisfaction. "There's no other authority. The people will only obey the orders of the religious men." REST AT:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19652-2003Apr13.html