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Muqtada's Shi'ites raise the stakes
By Ehsan Ahrari
One leading headline of April 4 from Iraq reads: "Mounting Protests Turn Deadly Across Iraq." There is growing evidence that the Bush administration has misled the public about real reason for invading Iraq. It is continuing to state that it wasn't preoccupied with ousting Saddam Hussein immediately after the September 11 attacks on the United States. At least for now, there are indications that the American public is in a forgiving mood, but that reality might not last in the coming weeks and months.
Supporters of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Spanish and El Salvadorian troops in the holy Shi'ite city of al-Najaf clashed violently, resulting in at least 35 deaths of protestors and four El Salvadoran soldiers, and over 100 people were injured. In Iraq's Anbar province, two US Marines were killed.
And on Monday, in a dawn raid, followers of Muqtada took over the governor's office in the British-controlled port city of Basra. Dozens of armed Mehdi Army militiamen stormed the governor's office in the southern city, raising a green flag on the roof of the building. They say it was a peaceful sit-in until Muqtada's deputy, Sheikh Yacoubi, was released from US custody.
Muqtada has long been a thorn in the side of the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). He uses ample fiery rhetoric in his anti-American speeches, but also knows when to stop before he is arrested. The CPA, on its part, has been careful about not clashing directly with him, thereby enhancing his status and reverence in the eyes of young Shi'ites, who are looking for reasons to clash with the occupying forces.
More to the point, Muqtada wants to use his sustained anti-Americanism as a vehicle to heighten his prestige, especially among those Shi'ites who perceive the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani not only as the supreme religious authority, but also as a source of political legitimacy in Iraq. Even though Sistani has been careful about maintaining his distance from the CPA - by refusing to meet with American representatives, through his continued disagreements over the legitimacy of the draft Iraqi constitution, through his insistence about holding direct elections and the timing of those elections - he has to date not urged his followers to indulge in anti-US demonstrations with a view to ousting them from Iraq.
The CPA not only understands the significance of doing all it can to accommodate Sistani's demands, it certainly does not want to do anything that would enhance Muqtada's prestige at the expense of undercutting Sistani's position among the Shi'ites. No one has a clear-cut idea when or under what circumstances the sustained anger of an occupied people will turn into uncontrollable riots and deaths.
Thus, the CPA seems to have decided that as long as al-Sistani refrains from depicting the US's presence as illegitimate and against Islam, it can withstand the fiery rhetoric of Muqtada as a minor irritation and continue to avoid a major clash with him or arresting him. In the meantime, the security situation in Iraq is getting so precarious that that one or more incidents might blow out of proportion. Pro-consul L Paul Bremer's decision to close down Muqtada's weekly newspaper, al-Hawza, for 60 days "for printing inflammatory articles" might be one such development, since Muqtada's followers are angry over it, causing a week of protests and violence against the American occupiers. (US newspaper ban plays into cleric's hands
, Asia Times Online, Mar 31.)
The violence of April 4 broke out outside the garrison of the Spanish forces, who are leading the coalition forces in Najaf. Credible reports indicate that the demonstrators - some of them were presumably from the banned Mehdi militia of Muqtada - fired toward the Spanish forces first. In response, the latter fired on the crowd. As one eyewitness described the situation: "... it was carnage."
The killing and mutilation of four American contractors in Fallujah on April 1 has already resulted in the promise of retribution from the American side. The political climate in the so-called Sunni triangle promises only to deteriorate further from these spirals of violence in the coming weeks. And now Shi'ites are becoming increasingly belligerent.
In the meantime, former administration counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke's credibility has been proven by the nonpartisan commission that was established to investigate the US government's level of attention and preparedness to terrorism before the September 11 attacks. For instance, the Bush administration did handle Clarke's recommendation for an unmanned predator flight over Afghanistan rather cavalierly, by assigning the Deputies Committee to consider it throughout 2001. In the same duration, the higher-level Principals Committee was busy with such issues as the national missile defense, Russia, Iraq and the Middle East. Bush himself admitted to journalist Bob Woodward in interviews for his book, Bush At War, that al-Qaeda was not part of his primary level of concern before the September 11 attacks.
The Bush administration's initial refusal to allow National Security chief Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly and under oath before the 9-11 Commission under the pretext of violation of separation of power and executive privilege reminded the public of the stalling and stonewalling tactics used by the administration of Richard M Nixon during the Watergate fiasco, which eventually resulted in an ignominious end to his presidency. Even in allowing Rice's testimony - which is scheduled for April 8 - the Bush officials and major Republican luminaries are busy impugning the motives of Clarke. Thus, the litmus test of the credibility has already deteriorated into who is more believable, Clarke or Rice - a sort of soap operatic framework. Critics have a point in noting that the security of the US should not be trivialized through such personal or partisan acrimony.
In the heat of these developments, not much attention has been paid at the national level to Secretary of State Colin Powell's admission on April 3 that the evidence he presented to the United Nations during February of last year may have been wrong. Even though Powell is still passing the buck by couching it in terms of failure of intelligence, in the eyes of the global community, the responsibility for presenting that "wrong evidence" should squarely be placed at the doorsteps of top Bush officials and George W Bush himself.
This cacophony of shrilled rhetoric, blame game, and the exercise of passing the buck seem to have become part and parcel of the making of a new president, or the unmaking of the sitting president. In one way, both phenomena may be viewed as the flip side of the same coin. However, when examined in the context of the evolution of history, events between April and November of 2004 will be long remembered for how they bewildered some and exhilarated others in different parts of the global community.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
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