Hope and Fear Greet Sistani's Rise
By Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Monday, January 26, 2004; 6:11 PM
With U.S. policy in Iraq rapidly evolving, the international online media is focusing on the emergence of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani as the preeminent domestic political force in the country. The announced end of the U.S. occupation this summer is generally welcomed, but Sistani's stated goal of direct elections for a government to take power on June 30 is provoking both hope and fear.
The editors of the Daily Star in Beirut, Lebanon, expressed a hopeful view this weekend. They praised Sistani for calling off demonstrations advocating quick elections until a United Nations team decides whether or not a vote is feasible.
Sistani's action, says the Daily Star, provides Washington with the opportunity "to make an equally meaningful gesture that could help navigate a way out of the stalemate in the country."
"The United States has tacitly and operationally acknowledged that it needs the help of many others to remedy this situation, especially in its request for U.N. assistance in the transition to Iraqi sovereignty. Whether this reflects good old American pragmatism or good old American domestic political panic should be irrelevant," the editorial states. "The important thing now is for Washington to respond to Sistani's gesture with something equally constructive and realistic."
They offer two suggestions:
"Washington could adopt a more humble attitude and admit that its end-of-June timetable for the initial transition can and should be revised ... The second possible move is for the U.S. to understand that the states bordering Iraq, especially the Arab states, can assist Iraq in its transition."
Columnist Hani Fahs, writing in the London-based Arab nationalist daily Dar al Hayat , says "Sistani has enough experience and knowledge of the fragility of the Iraqi scene to acknowledge the diversity of Iraq and of the Shiites themselves."
In Fahs' view, Sistani is "a reasonable religious figure" who provides "a guarantee that Iraq will not be led to unknown adventures and risks. This does not imply surrender but patience and wisdom, which is enforced by a will for independence, sovereignty and freedom and a readiness to use all, and any, means necessary -- at the right time."
Walid Khadduri, editor in chief of the London-based Middle East Economic Survey, is not as optimistic about Sistani's agenda. After a recent visit to Iraq he found that "many middle class and professional Iraqis are worried that elections in the next few months will polarize society even further rather than resolve issues."
"Uppermost in many people's minds is the fact that the U.S. appears to be favoring the religious establishment and tribal leaders at the expense of the middle class and secularists. These new elites are conservative by nature and their outlook is parochial at best," Khadduri writes. "Their interests do not transcend their local communities, and hardly encompass a modern vision of a unified Iraq."
Khadduri fears that today's arrangements "appear to contain the seeds of a civil war."
"To simply call for elections and draw up a political process to hand over authority to a major religious group without a clearly defined relationship between the communities would lead to disaster. What is needed today is a political process through which the three main communities can learn to compromise with each other, accommodate differences and achieve national reconciliation - before elections are held, not afterwards," Khadduri suggests.
Azzaman, a leading Iraqi daily edited by a former Baath party member in London, is reporting that a group of leading Sunni clerics "accused unnamed political organisations of colluding with the occupation forces in order to improve their chances in the elections," according to the Iraqi Press Monitor. "As long as the occupiers remain, said the Board, we cannot rely on elections. "
(The Iraqi Press Monitor, a valuable new service, is published by the London-based International War and Peace Reporting project. The staff summarizes stories from 13 newspapers now distributed in Baghdad.)
And Iraq's Kurds are even more alarmed, if the views of Khasraw Saleh Koyi in the Kurdistan Observer are any indication. When the Bush administration set the goal of ending the U.S. occupation by this summer, the Shiite clerics "began sharpening their swords to scapegoat both the Kurds (their partners in suffering and struggle) and the Americans (their liberators)."
The Shiites, Koyi argues, resent the Kurds because they are not Arabs and because they are pro-American.
"Kurds believe that if necessary, Arabs will use the collective powers of their 22 U.N. votes, as well as the oil and other strategic leverages they possess to oblige US into 'once again' betraying the Kurds; ... If the U.S. Administration ever decided to give in to such Arab pressures, it will 'effectively' drive a dagger of betrayal into the back of the Kurdish nation."
The fears of the online commentators that the United States will acquiesce to Sistani's vision of a Shiite-dominated Iraq amounts to a remarkable inversion of events 20 years ago.
In early 1984, the goal of U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf was to check Shiite influence in the region. In March of that year, the Reagan administration dispatched then-former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld as special envoy to meet with Saddam Hussein and his foreign minister Tariq Aziz to assure them of U.S. support in their war against Iran's revolutionary regime.
Twenty years later, Hussein and Aziz are in U.S. custody, awaiting trial for war crimes, and the Coalition Provisional Authority, which reports to again-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, is by all accounts seeking accommodation with the Iranian-backed Shiites. |
