This is the reality in Iraq that the PNAC boys plan to "transform" into a miniature version of US democracy:
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 23, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD, June 22 -- Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the senior religious figure of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority and the community's most influential voice, has expressed "great unease" about the 10-week-old U.S. occupation and demanded that the United States allow Iraqis to rule themselves.
Sistani's statements, in written responses to questions from The Washington Post, represent a rare foray for the Iranian-born cleric into political affairs. Sistani, viewed by U.S. officials as a crucial force for moderation in the turbulent postwar aftermath, stopped far short of demanding a withdrawal. But his words seemed to signal growing anxiety among the country's religious leadership over the direction of the U.S. occupation.
"We feel great unease over their goals, and we see that it is necessary that they should make room for Iraqis to rule themselves by themselves without foreign intervention," Sistani responded from his home in the southern city of Najaf.
A reclusive, scholarly figure in his seventies, Sistani has not been seen in public since before the U.S.-led invasion began in March. His replies, conveyed Saturday, were put in written form by his son and spokesman, Mohammed Rida Sistani, who acts on his father's authority.
Echoing other Shiite clerics, many of whom have become increasingly vocal in their denunciations of Western influence, Sistani also warned that the biggest threat facing the Arab country is "the obliteration of its cultural identity."
Despite Sistani's disavowal of any political role, U.S. officials, even as the war was underway, sought to open channels to the cleric, given his standing as the most respected among Iraq's senior ayatollahs in Najaf. He has refused to meet with U.S. officials, but U.S. commanders said that in the wake of Najaf's fall, Sistani issued a judgment urging Shiites not to interfere with American troops.
A copy of the edict was never published. But in a series of rulings, or fatwas, Sistani was credited with easing the transition after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, and in contrast to the Sunni region in the northwest, Iraq's largely Shiite south has remained relatively quiet. He ordered an end to looting that wrecked Baghdad and scarred other cities, demanded that stolen items be turned over to local authorities and forbade revenge killings against members of the Baath Party, whose rule was especially repressive in the south.
In a move welcomed by U.S. authorities, and in clear distinction with the Islamic government in neighboring Iran, he instructed Iraq's clergy to remain outside of government. That counsel was grounded in Sistani's theological view, a traditional line of thought that sees the clergy's calling as confined to spiritual affairs, not administrative. While other clerics in Iraq have spoken openly about political ambitions, Sistani has made clear that he seeks no role in a future government.
"Religious scholars should distance themselves from positions of administrative and executive responsibility," said Sistani, who wears a black turban that, among Shiites, denotes descent from the family of the prophet Muhammad.
L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, said today that he has offered to meet Sistani, who declined the invitation. Like other U.S. officials, he acknowledged the ayatollah's importance. "I think his views will be valuable," he said on his return to Baghdad from a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Jordan.
Sistani, a slight man with a long white beard and thick black eyebrows who speaks Arabic with a Persian accent, is known as a marja al-taqlid, a title held by a handful of the most senior ayatollahs. To his followers, he has the right to interpret Islamic law in everyday life -- in unprecedented and original fashion -- giving him great sway. For them, his authority is traditionally unquestioned, and his modest office down a ramshackle alley in Najaf is besieged daily by followers seeking aid or answers to religious questions.
His statements about the U.S. occupation do not carry the weight of a fatwa, the only such edict that would be binding. But his remarks come at a time when some of his supporters in Najaf have complained about his reclusiveness, particularly as two other groups, with a distinctly more political agenda, are vying for the support of the country's majority.
"We wish he would talk more forcefully, but he would never accept," said Kamal Abdullah Bahr Ulum, 62, a resident of Najaf and supporter of Sistani. "If he made a fatwa tomorrow to act, no one would remain in their home."
While Shiite clergy rarely speak positively about the U.S. occupation, most of the key actors are engaged with the American administration at some level.
Sistani's representative in Karbala, another Shiite holy city, is credited with helping facilitate behind the scenes an effective local government that has worked closely with the U.S. military to restore services and keep law and order. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir Hakim, has taken part -- with reservations -- in U.S.-led discussions on an interim authority. A group loyal to Moqtada Sadr, the son of a revered cleric assassinated in 1999 in Najaf, has long been seen as the most militant faction, but in recent weeks, it has markedly toned down its anti-U.S. pronouncements.
Beneath the surface, though, there remains great tumult, and competing factions are harsh in their denunciations of rivals as well as the United States. On April 10, two clerics were hacked to death by a mob in Najaf in circumstances still unclear.
At the shrine of Imam Ali, a son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad whom Shiites view as his heir, leaflets are posted on the walls from Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim guerrilla group based in Lebanon. In them, he says, "We are observing what the Americans do in Iraq, not what they say." In an edict from Ayatollah Kadhim Husseini Haeri, a senior Iraqi cleric based in Iran and the spiritual guide of Sadr's movement, he denounced the U.S. administration "as occupiers, not liberators."
The edict gave fodder to a rumor sweeping Baghdad and other cities that, in essence, accuses Zionists of carrying out a campaign to buy property in an attempt to facilitate an occupation of Iraq.
"Spill the blood of any Jew who attempts from now on to own land or homes in Iraq," Haeri wrote.
Among the organized religious opposition, Sadr's and Hakim's groups the most prominent, a current of resentment exists over Bremer's plans to appoint an advisory council of 25 or 30 Iraqis that will remain under his authority. Groups, including Hakim's, a well-honed organization that competes with Sadr's street-level popularity, fear the council is a way to circumvent their power. U.S. forces have carried out several raids against offices of Hakim's group in Baghdad, most recently on Saturday.
"People say the Americans are behaving toward the Shiites as they would behave toward an enemy," Hakim said in a recent interview at his Najaf home, where a Mercedes and five late-model sports-utility vehicles were parked outside.
For others -- in an echo of Sistani's warning -- the threat posed by a secular vision of Iraq endorsed by U.S. officials is the graver danger. As in other sermons Friday in Baghdad and Najaf, Sheik Kadhim Ebadi, a follower of Sadr, told thousands of worshipers at the Mohsin Mosque that Iraq was engaged in a "clash of civilizations."
"I want to ask if we are up to this challenge," he said. |
