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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (26506)	8/26/2003 7:32:33 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 89467

Clerical trouble in the south By Charles Recknagel PRAGUE - It is still unclear who attacked the home of Ayatollah Muhammad Sa'id al-Hakim at the weekend, apparently in an effort to kill the 67-year-old religious leader. News agencies quote a spokesman for the cleric, Abdul Hussein al-Kadi, as saying that four men in a car dropped a canister of cooking gas near the wall of the house beside the room where the grand ayatollah and his son were resting. The spokesman said that bodyguards noticed a flame coming from the top of the canister before it exploded, killing two of the guards and another household employee. The ayatollah was also wounded with light cuts to the neck. But while no one knows who was behind the attack, suspicion in Najaf immediately fell on political rivals of the al-Hakim family. And those enemies - thanks to the family's prominence - are numerous. The ayatollah is the head of one of Iraq's most powerful clerical families. The family includes his nephew Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, who leads the best-organized Iraqi Shi'ite group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). The group waged a long guerrilla campaign against deposed leader Saddam Hussein from exile in Iran until the US overthrew the Iraqi regime in April. In recent months, the SCIRI has modified its traditional calls for an Islamic system in Iraq and now says that it is ready to work toward that goal within a democratic framework. A representative of the SCIRI is one of the 25 members of the US-appointed Governing Council in Baghdad. Within hours of the attack, a top SCIRI official said that Saddam loyalists had attempted to kill the religious leader, who has no formal relationship with the SCIRI itself. Mohsen al-Hakim told France's AFP news agency that "the primary suspects are former members of the Ba'ath regime ... that want to spark a war between Shi'ites and Sunnis." But Saddam loyalists are perhaps just the most obvious enemy to single out. Many observers say that it is equally possible that Hakim was attacked by supporters of another Iraqi Shi'ite religious family who oppose working with the US-led occupation. That is the al-Sadr family, until recently headed by Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was assassinated along with two of his sons by presumed agents of Saddam in Najaf in 1999. The loyalty of many of his supporters has now passed to another son, Muqtada, a mid-level cleric about 30 years of age. Mohamed-Ali Haidari, a correspondent with RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq, says that relatives of this weekend's bombing victims accused al-Sadr supporters of staging the attack. "Some of the people who were in the funeral of those three who were killed yesterday accused Muqtada al-Sadr followers and they called on the religious leaders to establish a Shi'ite militia in Najaf to prevent another attack," Haidari said. Al-Sadr's group, which calls itself "The Active Religious Seminary", has denied it has anything to do with the attempt on the elder al-Hakim, and said that Saddam loyalists are to blame. But al-Sadr's group has previously drawn charges of involvement in attacks and intimidation in Najaf that have highlighted political differences among Shi'ite political organizations. The most notable of those attacks was a mob killing of a pro-US cleric, Abd al-Majid al-Khoi, shortly after his return from exile in London in early April. Al-Khoi was himself the son of another extremely powerful former grand ayatollah, Abolqassem al-Khoi. Al-Khoi was murdered as he emerged from the city's Imam Ali Mosque in a gesture of reconciliation with the mosque's custodian, who was popularly considered to have collaborated with Saddam's regime. The custodian was killed along with al-Khoi and it is unclear whether al-Khoi was an assassination target or was struck down because he tried to defend the other man. Immediately after al-Khoi's murder, supporters of al-Sadr surrounded the house of another grand ayatollah in Najaf, Ali Sistani, in what was taken to be a gesture of intimidation. Sistani - who has said that Shi'ite leaders should limit themselves to religious questions and stay out of politics - went into hiding and only re-emerged after tribesmen loyal to him raced to Najaf. Correspondent Haidari says that after the attack on al-Khoi and the siege at Sistani's house, religious leaders in Najaf sought to smooth relations between all parties to prevent further unrest: "The Shi'ite leaders in Najaf tried to calm down the situation and tried to fix the relations between the different parties in order not to go further with the disagreements and differences between the al-Sadr followers and those of al-Hakim and Sistani," Haidari said. He continued, "They tried to bring them together and al-Sadr condemned the attack on Abd Majid al-Khoi and said that it is ridiculous to say that our followers are the people who did it." The two other living grand ayatollahs, who along with al-Hakim and Sistani comprise the four most powerful clerics in Iraq, are Muhammad Ishaq Fayadh and Bashir Hussein al-Najafi. Both rarely speak on political issues. All four are based in the Shi'ite seminary - the hawza - in Najaf, which is the highest religious authority of Iraq's majority Shi'ite population. Their followers regard them as sources for religious emulation and their written opinions can carry the force of law. With suspicion in the bomb attack on al-Hakim now divided between Saddam loyalists and the rival Shi'ite group of al-Sadr, the incident is only likely to deepen the uncertainty and distrust that currently make Washington's task of creating a stable, post-Saddam Iraq so difficult. The attacks show that while most of the world's attention is on Baghdad in the wake of the massive bombing of the UN headquarters last week, Iraq's political wars are neither confined to the capital nor to targeting foreigners and coalition troops. They also aim at settling differences between domestic groups vying for power, even as the coalition seeks to begin moving the country toward future national elections. US civil administrator for Iraq L Paul Bremer said last week that it will be six to eight months before a constitution can be adopted and general elections held.

To: epicure who wrote (26506)	8/26/2003 7:48:21 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo talkingpointsmemo.com August 25th, 2003 -- 10:24 PM EDT A few nights ago, over drinks, a friend asked me what the rationale for a Clark candidacy would be. Not the substantive rationale, mind you, but the political one. How could he win? What point would his entry into the race have at this point, and so forth? The political rationale is, I think, straightforward and strong. Here's how I'd describe it. Howard Dean is now by many measures the front-runner in the Democratic primary campaign. Though he lags in the national polls, he's at least in the hunt in both Iowa and New Hampshire. He's raising money at a faster clip than any of the other candidates. And he's clearly generated the most excitement. But Dean is an insurgent candidate, often campaigning explicitly against Washington and the party establishment. By many measures he's campaigning to various left-leaning elements in the Democratic party base -- notwithstanding his previous record as a fairly centrist governor of Vermont. I say this all not with any judgment attached, just as a description of the developments in the race, as nearly I can ascertain them. Now, by the normal laws of political gravitation, Dean's sustained surge should have forced a coalescence around one of the several more-centrist-minded establishment candidates -- Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards, Lieberman. With Dean catching fire, those who aren't comfortable with his candidacy should be getting behind one candidate in order to beat him. But that clearly has not happened. In some ways this is a more striking development than Dean's rise itself. Now, why hasn't that coalescence taken place? I think the answer is elementary. None of the current candidates has passed the audition for the job. Lieberman's campaign is generally believed to be moribund (and I like the guy). Edwards has gone absolutely nowhere. Gephardt has bet everything on getting the support of organized labor. But if he gets it, it'll basically be a mercy ... well, I don't want to be off-color. But, you know what I mean. Kerry is basically the establishment front-runner at the moment. But it's an extremely anemic frontrunnerdom. He's basically the front-runner by default because all the other potential frontrunners who haven't caught fire are doing even worse than he is. What this all tells me is that there is a vacuum with a lot of political forces pushing to fill it. And yet none of the current candidates has been capable of becoming the vehicle for those forces. I know these are some convoluted metaphors. But I trust my meaning is relatively clear. Now, there are all sorts of reasons why late-entering, draft-so-and-so type candidacies never end up winning. But the vacuum I've just described is one Clark could potentially fill. At least he could get in the game and give it his best shot. Clark's other potential strength is that he combines outsider status and a thorough critique of the president, with impeccable national security credentials and domestic policy positions with a seemingly broad appeal. -- Josh Marshall