Hakim’s death leaves experts divided on future
Bomb could spark civil war or increased US ties
The single constant: Attack was unlikely the handiwork of rival Shiites
Nicholas Blanford
Special to The Daily Star
BEIRUT: The assassination of senior Iraqi Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim has left Mideast analysts divided on its implications for Iraq, with predictions of civil war contrasting with possible increased Shiite cooperation with the American occupiers.
But most analysts seem to agree that Friday’s car bombing outside the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, which left over 100 people dead, was not carried out by a rival Shiite faction. Instead the suspects include loyalists to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Iraqi nationalists, Iraqi Islamists, foreign Islamists linked to Al-Qaeda or a combination of two or more of them.
The diversity of possible culprits reflects the continued murkiness over exactly who is behind the attacks in Iraq.
The audacity of planting a massive car bomb beside the most revered site in Shiite Islam, coming days after the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, suggests that the perpetrators represent a formidable and mounting threat to US efforts to maintain order. The death of Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), also raises the spectre of sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites.
William Beeman, head of the Middle East department at Brown University, argued that Hakim’s assassination is the “opening volley in the coming Iraqi civil war.”
The United States, he said, “will reap the whirlwind.”
“Martyrdom unleashes a paroxysm of anger and guilt that never dies, and it inspires believers to redouble their efforts to expiate their own sense of responsibility for what happened,” Beeman told The Daily Star.
The Shiite believers will use Hakim’s assassination as a means to inflame emotions, likening the event to the death of Imam Hussein.
“Thus it is likely that this event will be used as a platform to attack both the Sunni community and the United States,” Beeman said. “A legend is about to be born that will inspire serious action among believers in the community.”
A source close to Hizbullah’s leadership said that the American authorities, rather than the Sunni community, would bear the brunt of Shiite anger over Hakim’s death.
“A great number of Shiites in Iraq believe the Americans were behind the bombing,” the source said. “There is great anger against the Americans because the Shiites were forbidden from carrying arms to protect themselves.”
Power struggles in the Iraqi Shiite community have spawned several deadly attacks since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in April. Supporters of Moqtada Sadr, a young firebrand cleric hostile to the US-led occupation, are thought to have been responsible for the death of Abdel Majid al-Khoei, who was hacked to death by a mob in Najaf a day after Saddam Hussein’s ouster. Last week, Mohammed Saeed al-Hakim, a senior Iraqi cleric and relative of Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, was wounded when a gas cylinder exploded beside his home, an act that also has been pinned on Sadr.
But Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan, said that the Najaf car bombing had the hallmarks of attacks earlier this month against the Jordanian embassy and UN headquarters in Baghdad, both believed to be the work of Sunni Islamists and/or Iraqi Sunni nationalists.
“I believe Shiites almost certainly would not blow up such a huge bomb so near such a sacred site as the shrine of Imam Ali, so I think it was almost certainly Saddam loyalists,” Cole said.
The Hizbullah source said the possibility that Sadr was behind Hakim’s death “must be ruled out 100 percent.
“You could buy a Shiite to blow up a house with a thousand people inside, but you could never buy a Shiite to blow up the tomb of Imam Ali and kill a sayyed (descendent of the Prophet Mohammed) like Baqer al-Hakim,” the source said.
Hizbullah’s relations with the Iranian-supported SCIRI cooled after Hakim took the decision to cooperate with the American occupation forces. It also made him a natural target for loyalists to Saddam Hussein, Cole said, whose regime had shown little respect for Shiite holy shrines during the brutal suppression of the Shiite rebellion in March 1991.
Cole described Hakim’s death as “one more element of instability” in Iraq. “But I am not sure it is a sea change,” he said, predicting that Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the brother of Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim who has a seat on the US-selected interim governing council, would assume leadership of SCIRI.
Hakim’s assassins “have sent the message that it is dangerous to cooperate with the United States. They have also again made the point that the US is not in control,” Cole said. “As long as the Shiites refrain from blaming it on each other and avoid fratricide, it should pass. But it is a setback for the US administration of the country.”
However, Farid Khazen, professor of politics at the American University of Beirut, said that the killings of Khoei and Hakim were creating a vacuum among the Shiite leadership.
“There’s more room for Moqtada Sadr to be more active,” he said. “The senior wise and moderate Shiite leadership is gradually disappearing. These are the people who can speak for the Shiites in an authoritative way.”
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani remains the most influential of Iraq’s mujtahid (models of emulation), and while rejecting any “foreign rule” has urged his followers not to interfere with American forces. Sistani’s moderate stand has been attacked by Sadr’s supporters, and the 72-year-old cleric has refused to leave his home in Najaf since mid-April.
Instead of resorting to revenge which would further erode stability in Iraq, Shafeeq Ghabra, founding president of the American University of Kuwait, said Hakim’s assassination could spur Shiites to seek closer ties with the Americans and Iraq’s Sunni minority.
The Sunnis, he said, resent their loss of power and fear the prospect of a Shiite-dominated Iraq. The fate of Iraq depends on how the Shiites respond to Hakim’s death.
“They have to be able to calm the Sunni minority in Iraq and the wider Arab world,” Ghabra said. “They have the option to rise above (the bombing) and they have the option to ‘Lebanonize’ Iraq. If they Lebanonize Iraq, all Iraqis will pay a heavy price.”
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