*Spokesmen for the Shiite Dawa Party and for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) in Iraq explained today why key religious leaders boycotted Jay Garner's leadership meeting in Baghdad on Monday. Both rejected the idea of the US playing a mentoring role in setting up a new Iraqi government. SCIRI spokesman Hamid Bayati said his organization would cooperate with Garner only in his capacity as head of Iraqi economic reconstruction, not on a political basis. The Dawa spokesman, Ibrahim al-Ashiqir (sp.?), said that it was not reasonable for the party to attend a conference when it did not know who else would be there or what the outcome might be. He also complained about US neo-imperialism in Iraq. - Asharq al-Awsat

*Megan Stack has a smart article in the LA Times on the situation of Shiites in Iraq. Some quotes:

' "If [the United States] imposes a secular government that doesn't respect the principles of Islam, we will resist it," Abdul Mohdi, the chief religious leader of Karbala, said last week. "The people trust the clergy. The clergy will offer them the right path. We want the American troops off our soil," Mohdi said.'

She goes on, ' "They could cause a lot of trouble for the Americans. There will be resistance from the Shiites," said Saad Naji Jawad, a political science professor at Baghdad University. "There will be clashes in the south. I am sure of it," Jawad said. "Sooner or later the Americans will have to use force." '

She quotes Shaikh Muhammad al-Fartusi, "We want an Islamic rule chosen by the people. We prefer the law of heaven, the law of God, rather than the law of man." '

She adds, ' "By saying they want democracy they mean, 'We're the majority, so we'd have the upper hand,' " said Jawad, the political science professor. "When they say they don't want political parties, they mean that they're the only political party." In his office in Karbala, Mohdi was unapologetic."Political parties always fail in the end," he said. "Our prophet Muhammad made political decisions and military decisions. He was the administrator of the Islamic nation. How can we separate religion from politics?" '

All of this looks very bad and very alarming to me, and I am shocked at how calm about it the cable news networks are. Of course, they've given up on much international coverage starting today. We're back to local human interest stories and very little hard news. Lucky we have the Web.

*An Iranian court has sentenced some Baluchi tribesmen to long terms in prison for running a prostitution/slavery ring. They would approach extremely poor young girls (some as young as 14) in the Mashad area with an offer to marry them. Then they would smuggle them over to Pakistan and make them work in a brothel. I suppose speaking only Persian in Karachi might make it hard for them to contact local authorities or escape. Similar rings are run in Karachi using Bihari girls from India or from Indian-immigrant families. It seems a little unlikely to me that the Baluch could have gotten away with all this for any length of time without the active complicity of the Mashad police and the Zahedan border guards, who no doubt were paid handsomely.

*Quote from Dawn about Pakistan: "President Gen Pervez Musharraf has said that foreigners were not a threat to Pakistan, but major danger to its integrity was from religious extremists which were involved in the politics of hatred."

*Things may be looking up somewhat economically for Afghanistan, according to the Asian Development Bank. Afghanistan's recent cycle of drought has started coming to an end, allowing 82% more food to be produced this year than last. Economic activity in cities like Kabul rebounded in '02, with lots of construction and growth in services, in part fueled by international aid. Lots of Afghan entrepreneurs and professionals are returning. Of course, when the per capita GDP is only $170 per year, it is not that hard to get some economic improvement. What is needed is a lot of it.




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*Thousands of Iraqis demonstrated in Baghdad Monday morning against the leadership meeting held under American auspices. The demonstration was boycotted, however, by the powerful Sadr Movement led by Muqtada al-Sadr. They said they wanted to get involved on neither side. The Sadr spokesman, Adnan Shahmani, said that the Sadriyyun did not object to the US removing Saddam and weapons of mass destruction from Iraq, but if the American presence became an occupation, they would resist it. He also said that the Sadr Movement recognizes as the highest religious authority in Shiism not Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani but rather Kazim al-Ha'iri, who has been exiled in Qom for many years. Al-Shahmani maintains that the late Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr had urged his followers to turn to al-Ha'iri when he, al-Sadr, died. He characterized Sistani and his followers as quietist traditionalists, but said the Sadr movement is activist and deeply involved in society, and so is progressive. This statement seems to be code for the Sadrists wanting a Shiite-ruled religious state in Iraq. He dismissed the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the al-Da`wa party as having no standing inside the county (i.e. he sees them as expatriate parties with a shallow membership basis inside Iraq itself).

*Thanks to those of you who saw me on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer Monday evening and sent kind responses. The guests, Michael Hudson, Fawaz Gerges, and I were interviewed by Margaret Warner and were discussing the issues around Islam and democracy in Iraq. I think we all agreed it was possible, but only if it was inclusive and not seen as a mainly American project.

*The leadership meeting in Baghdad sponsored by Jay Garner attracted more than 250 Iraqi notables--mainly technocrats and academics. (Ironically, these are precisely the sort of people the Republican Right tries to marginalize over here in the US :-) They, or at least their sponsoring organizations, had been selected by Garner himself. It was not a representative meeting. Exiles were over-represented. Shiites were under-represented. The Da`wa Party and the Sadr Movement, two of the largest political groupings, refused to be involved. Al-Da`wa has said it will not cooperate with a military administration; Garner's reporting line goes back to the Pentagon. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most respected Shiite cleric in Iraq, refuses to meet with the Americans. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq did deign to send a "low-level" delegation. Since the Shiites form a majority of the country, and since the religious parties are among the more organized sections of the community, leaving them out would be a huge mistake. Setting things up so that they feel they cannot on principle attend is also a huge mistake.

*There is trouble looming in Iraq between religious Shiites and religious Sunnis. Despite the demonstrations in Baghdad on Monday calling for Iraqi unity and for an early departure by the US, the mixture of religion and politics will be potent. The Financial Times reports, "Mahmud al-Issawi, deputy head of the Higher Islamic Council, a Sunni representative body, claimed on Sunday that his community formed a majority in Iraq. Nearly every other observer believes the Shia represent at least 60 per cent of the population. 'Of course we want an Islamic government. But we do not want to swap one form of tyranny for another - like in Iran,' he said." The Sunni Arabs have lorded it over the Shiites for hundreds of years in Iraq, and if they attempt to go on doing so, there will be blood in the streets. But al-Issawi is quite right that the Sunnis are not going to agree to rule by ayatollahs, or the implementation of Shiite law, either. Shiites often seem not to realize how offensive such developments would be to Iraqi Sunnis. I have a bad feeling about this.

*Al-Hayat says that the US Marines have emptied a large dam near Kut that had been built at Saddam's orders to dry out the swamps of the south, where the Shiite Marsh Arabs lived. Only 10% of the Iraqi marshlands survive according to satellite photos. The dam served no practical purpose other than to dry out the south and hurt the Shiites, who were rebelling against Saddam.




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*The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) may participate in some way in the leadership meeting called by Jay Garner for Monday in Baghdad. The last such meeting, in Nasiriya last week, was boycotted by all the major Shiite groups. The al-Dawa Party and the Sadr movement are determined to boycott Monday's meeting. The Dawa Party objects to Garner's reporting line going back to the US military. If the Baghad meeting has substantial Shiite representation, Garner's process will have been partially validated. But if it is like Nasiriya, mainly Sunnis and Christians, it could be the start of a disaster. If you cut people out, they become spoilers. That is what happened at Mogadishu, i.e. Black Hawk Down. Aidid was cut out by the then coalition, and he attacked the US troops.

*Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi says that "No Iranian officials have suggested the formation of an Iranian-style government in Iraq." Iran is quite divided, with Kharrazi being a relative liberal in Iranian terms. It is the hardliners in Iran who follow Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei who want a theocracy in Iraq. But even many hardliners are making conciliatory noises, at least, toward the Americans. In contrast, Khamenei recently shot down talk of reopening relations with the US. He called such talk "treason and stupidity." One remark I thought was funny came from a hardliner who responded to US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's warnings to Iraq's neighbors not to try to intervene in the country. The Iranian cleric said "The US is complaining about outside interference in Iraq?!"

Rumsfeld's desperate posturing about outside interference is meant to cover up his own mistakes. He was the one who insisted that the US and British go into southern Iraq with a very light force. He was right that it was sufficient militarily. But then they couldn't keep order in the cities when the Baath was toppled suddenly, producing all that rioting and the looting of the Iraqi Museum and Library. Worse, their thinness on the ground allowed Shiite militias to move into the vacuum, some of them backed by Iran. This is a direct result of the Rumself commitment to light, mobil military forces. So Rumsfeld erred, and he is in part trying to cover up his mistake by attempting to intimidate Iranian leaders.

*Asharq al-Awsat reports that the US army has presided over the creation of a new city council for the northern city of Mosul, made up of city notables. The names will be released shortly. This sort of process is going on throughout the country, and is all to the good. But what caught my eye is that the Mosul city council has started a campaign to disarm the inhabitants of the city, including the Kurdish fighters (peshmerga). The process of buying back or confiscating weapons from the civilian population could be extremely important to returning Iraq to normal. Of course, this process itself implies that order can be provided in some other way than by citizen militias. In Mosul the GIs and the Mosul police are doing joint patrols. (Since Mosul is a northern, Sunni, city, perhaps more of its old Baath police force is acceptable to people than would be the case in the Shiite south; and not every traffic cop under Saddam was necessarily complicit in war crimes).



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*Craig Smith of the New York Times has reported very interesting and significant developments in the Sadr Movement in Iraq. It appears that the movement has now recognized Shaikh Kazim al-Haeri as its ultimate spiritual head. He is an older Ayatollah with the authority to issue authoritative rulings, and he favors a Khomeinist style government in Iraq. He recognized Muqtada al-Sadr as his deputy in Iraq. Al-Sadr is enormously popular but is only in his late twenties or at most 30, and does not have the standing to issue fatwas or rulings for the laity. He had earlier been insisting that people follow the rulings of his deceased father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who had been assassinated by the Baathists. But in the Usuli Shiism that predominates in Iraq, it is not permissible to follow the rulings of a deceased jurisprudent. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Muqtada's rival, had circulated a criticism to that effect some weeks ago. In response, Muqtada appears to have secretly reached out to Ayatollah Kazim Haeri, still in Iran. He received the appointment as Haeri's deputy around April 8 and was told to cut off the Saddamists and the second-rung Saddamists. This instruction may have had something to do with the killing of American-backed cleric Abd al-Majid Khu'i on April 10. For some time, Muqtada's links to Haeri had been kept secret. Now they are being openly revealed and members of the Sadr Movement are displaying Haeri's picture through Najaf and eastern Baghdad. It now transpires that Shaykh Muhammad Fartusi, sermonizer at the al-Hikmah mosque, had been sent there not by Sistani but by Haeri. He was arrested Monday and detained briefly by US troops because they found a handgun in his car as he returned to Baghdad from Najaf. (Khu'i is also said to have been armed with a hand gun. Bush finally got his wish--he is now in a cowboy movie, set in Iraq, with the ayatollahs playing the sheriffs and outlaws!) Fartusi's detention sparked demonstrations by thousands of Shiites and the intervention of the other clerics induced the US to release him. He is openly contemptuous of the US, and told an interviewer from Dubai he was beaten and that the US detention was worse that the sort Saddam used to practice.. His leader, Kazim Haeri, wants a Khomeini-style Islamic republic in Iraq. The combination of Haeri's authority and seniority with Muqtada's cult of personality may prove powerful among the poor Shiites of Iraq.

*US Marines have induced Sayyid Abbas Fadil to vacate the mayor's mansion in Kut. A member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), he had moved in to Kut and claimed to be its mayor, supported by an armed retinue of returning Iraqi expatriates from Iran. The first attempt of the Marines to move against him was blocked by an angry crowd of 1200. The Marines recently gave Sayyid Abbas an ultimatum. He has in the past said that he could as easily control the people of Kut from a mosque as from city hall, and would not be deterred by the Americans. So, the Marines won one, symbolically. But where will popular loyalties in Kut (a city of over 300,000) lie in the long run? Will the mob eventually reassemble against them? They have recently been fired on. In the nearby city of Baquba, pop. about 400,000, a SCIRI government has been installed; there are no Marines in the city. Badr Brigade militiamen patrol the streets. An earlier report said that there were also Faili Kurds among them.

*The Independent reported local Iraqi reaction to Donald Rumsfeld's rejection of a Shiite theocracy in Iraq from the al-Muhsin Mosque in east Baghdad, where 13000 worshippers had gathered:

' "I thought the Americans said they wanted a democracy in Iraq," said Kassem al-Sa'adi, a 41-year-old merchant. "If it is a democracy, why are they allowed to make the rules?" About 13,000 people gathered outside the mosque where the imam, Jabal al-Khafji called for an Islamic state in Iraq. The cleric's view is widely shared by Iraq's Shia majority which is clamouring for the occupying forces to be removed. '




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*AP is reporting that at Friday Prayers in Nasiriya, a cleric giving the sermon to 2000 worshipers said, "We have to be ready in the long term to establish our own Islamic state." The words were those of As`ad al-Nasiri, a prominent cleric who just returned from Syria. But like many Iraqi Shiites, he means by that a state governed by Islamic law rather than one ruled by clerics. He is said to have added, "We have to preserve this country by respecting the professionals and not interfere in their work." But of course, if the professionals happen to be secularists who refuse to implement an Islamic state, that might provoke some interference from al-Nasiri and his like, now mightn't it? The last I could tell, Nasiriya is dominated politically by the al-Da`wa Party, an old Shiite revolutionary party. The first thing he said should be taken very seriously.

*Abd al-`Aziz al-Hakim, second in command of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has reached Baghdad after winding his way through Shiite cities like Kut and Amara, being lionized in each. He came from Iran last week, where he had been in exile. He spoke to a large congregation at a mosque in east Baghdad, saying that SCIRI would not participate in any government "imposed" on Iraq, and that Iraqis are perfectly able to govern themselves. He also called for Iraqi unity. He said his brother, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, will come back to Iraq soon. SCIRI is likely to be a major player, but so far their leaders have refused to cooperate with the leadership meetings being called by Jay Garner, the American head of the office for reconstruction.

*Grand Ayatollah Shaykh Muhammad Husayn Fadlu'llah of Lebanon gave an interview with Asharq al-Awsat in which he said that although the American war on Iraq had saved its people from a graven idol (i.e. Saddam), it aimed at reducing the country to a mere military base. He said that the demonstrations at Karbala were an "uprising" that could turn into anti-colonial resistance against US rule. Fadlu'llah is followed by some Iraqi Shiites, having been born and educated in Najaf. Although he has broken with the Hizbullah party (and with Iran), on these issues his stance is probably not far from that of Hizbullah.

*On the other hand, Shaikh `Abd al-Hadi al-Muhammadawi gave a sermon to the largest congregation in the Shiite part of Baghdad, in the al-Mansura district, in which he called for Iraqi independence from any "occupation" but at the same time called for a united Iraq and an end to violence and terrorism. He said it was natural for everyone to cooperate with the Americans for now, since they were the occupying power and had removed the stain of Saddam's tyranny from Iraq. But he said that the US now has a responsiblity to follow through on its promises and to leave as soon as security and stability are restored to the country. He called for a dialogue of civilizations. This phrase comes from Iranian President Muhammad Khatami and shows that Khatami's reformist and moderate principles have some followers among the clerics in Iraq. This sermon is the first evidence I have seen of influence from the Iranian reformers rather than from the hardliners (who seem to have a special line into SCIRI). This could get interesting. In the meantime, give that man a medal!






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*Apparently two nights ago there was a major battle in the Mashtal quarter of New Baghdad between US troops and Arab volunteers who had gone there to fight them from all over the Arab world. The word is that 3 US soldiers were killed, but there are no details. - Asharq al-Awsat

*Iran has allowed some 2000 armed men of various factions to infiltrate back into Iraq, according to Ali Nourizadeh of Asharq al-Awsat. These include Badr Brigade fighters of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), as well as some militiamen loyal to the al-Da`wa Party. In addition, several hundred armed members of the Quds Brigade have been sent over, as well. These fighters belong to families of Iraqi Shiites of Iranian heritage, who were expelled to Iran in the tens of thousands by Saddam. Many of their families had been in Iraq for decades, and some for centuries. Many of these infiltrators speak Arabic with an Iraqi accent.

He says the fighters were given arms and loaded down with dollars by Iranian hardliners before they set out. They were instructed to take over 11 major towns and cities with a largely Shiite population, implementing rule by "revolutionary committee" (Persian: Komiteh) as happened in Iran after the Feb. 1979 Khomeini revolution. He says they came in and spread around money to the Shiite seminary students, getting them on their side. He warns that a couple of units who came in with deputy SCIRI leader Abd al-`Aziz al-Hakim had been trained in guerrilla and suicide bombing tactics.

This account strikes me as inaccurate in detail and overly schematic. It may have been influenced by a similar report of Debka, an unreliable Israeli site that often puts out disinformation. For instance, in Nasiriya the US Marines are in control of the city quite firmly. The Al-Da`wa Party appears to be hugely influential there politically, but there hasn't been effective al-Da`wa militia activity, and al-Da`wa leaders have fretted that SCIRI and the Sadr Movement are outflanking them elsewhere because they do have militias. Likewise, in Amara (pop. 340,000), there appears to have been a spontaneous local Shiite revolt against the Baath during the last days of fighting. Last I heard it is in local Shiite hands. A reporter said on April 24 that there were rumors in Amara of Iranian infiltration, but the local British official said he had seen no sign of it. SCIRI fighters do not control Najaf or Karbala or Kufa, as Nourizadeh implies. The Sadr Movement militia seems to dominate Kufa, whereas tribesmen loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani came in to restore order to Najaf. So, I don't doubt Badr Brigade and Quds Brigade infiltration to some places, but it hasn't resulted in the takeover of 11 towns and cities. Indeed, the Badr Brigade appears to have been chased out of Sadr City, the biggest center of Shiite population.

Allowing these forces to cross the border (which cannot in any case be easily policed, since it is long and cuts through rugged territory) breaks a gentleman's agreement between Tehran and Washington reached during the past two or three months. Nourizadeh suggests that SCIRI in particular had been seeking a way to live peacefully with the "new American neighbor," and its non-confrontational policy may have been over-ruled by hardliners in Iran. I personally disagree with this analysis, though. I think SCIRI leader Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim feels that the US stabbed him in the back when they decided not to allow the expatriate organizations to come in and form a provisional government. Zalmay Khalilzad and Paul Wolfowitz suddenly announced that Iraq would be US-ruled for an indefinite period of time. I think SCIRI infiltration is revenge on al-Hakim's part for what he sees as a betrayal. He has warned the US several times against wearing out its welcome.

*Someone replied to my recent article on how Shiite religious militias have been taking over towns and city quarters by saying that only 20% of the Shiites support the religious parties. And since Iraq is 60% Shiite, only 12% really are in question here, and they can hardly take over the country. But my argument is not about numbers. I cannot see how anyone can know the percentage of support for these various factions, anyway. It is not as if there has been scientific polling. My concern is this. There is a militia of 6,000 or so armed men, mostly loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, which is patrolling the eastern Shiite slums of Baghdad, now called Sadr City. Some 2 million people live there. Guys, that is something like 8% of the population right there.

It is not that everyone in Sadr City supports Muqtada. But if you had town meetings to elect delegates to anything, surely the very fact of the control of these quarters by this militia is going to affect the outcome of the selection process. Sadr City is likely to be represented by people from the Sadr Movement. The same thing is true in a place like Baquba, a city of 280,000 (i.e. a fairly big urban center for Iraq--this would be like a city of 3 million in the US, proportionally, e.g. Chicago). Last I heard, the hardline Badr Brigade had infiltrated this city near Iran and taken it over. Who is Baquba going to select as a delegate to any decision-making body. And, how exactly are these militias going to be disarmed or rolled back? Are you going to send US troops into Sadr City? Shoot into the resulting crowds? This is a nightmare in the making.

Here is what James Rupert of Newsday writes from Sadr City: 'In the past decade, Hussein's rule and international economic sanctions pushed Saddam City from poverty to misery. Families supplement their diet by combing Baghdad's vast garbage dumps. The community's history and its village roots mean that "many [of its] people have had no education. And they have no experience of getting along with other groups," said Adel, an elderly, educated Shiite from an old Baghdad family. "So it is easy for them to become extremists." '

In Kut when Sayyid `Abbas Fadil came in from Iran with an armed retinue and set himself up in the mayor's mansion, the Marines' first thought was to "just kill him." But when they moved on him, a crowd of 1200 formed and they had to back off. Sayyid Abbas's followers are certainly a minority in Kut (pop. 380,000), but they are nevertheless a force to reckon with in its politics. So, my worry is that Rumsfeld, by sending in such a light force with limited capacity to assert control of urban areas (I don't think there are even any troops in Baquba), gave an opening for these Shiite militias to take over. They have enough popularity that moving against them will be dangerous.

Remember that when the US went into Somalia, Aidid was an ally. But then the US cut him out of the deal when they decided they had to tame the warlords. And that, my friends, is how you got Mogadishu and Black Hawk Down. The US can't afford to cut out the more radical Shiite forces like Muqtada al-Sadr, but so far has no framework for dealing with his militias or for drawing him into normal politics. Things are not hunky dory in Iraq, people, and while Jay Garner may or may not be able to deal with this problem, it isn't that there is no problem.


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*Some of you may have seen me on John Gibson's The Big Story on Fox Cable News at 5:30 pm EST on 4/23. I may be able to get a transcript and will post it if so. Basically, I argued that we should not be sanguine about the way in which Shiite religious militias have been taking over towns and neighborhoods. This control will position them to send their delegates to any provisional government or constitutional convention, and give them enormous influence on the shape of post-Saddam Iraq. I am afraid that the secular-minded Shiites will get locked out of this process because they aren't the ones with militias and charismatic leaders.

*According to al-Hayat, followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf continue to be worried about his safety. His lieutenant in Kuwait, Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Mihri, called on the tribes of the Middle Euphrates to redouble their efforts in providing him security. He worries that after the Karbala commemoration, there is a power vacuum in the holy cities. Sistani is locked in a power struggle with Muqtada al-Sadr and the Sadr Movement, with Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and with other competitors for authority.

*Al-Hayat also ran an interview with Sayyid `Ala Al-Tu'mah that says that Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Mudarrisi has been released after much insistent negotiating by Shiite clerical forces. The story had appeared that he and fifty some other Shiite clerics had been detained on Tuesday by forces of the Mujahidin-i Khalq, an Iranian radical organization based in Iraq and opposed to the current Iranian government. Mudarrisi and the others were returning to Iraq from exile in Iran when captured. News services reported that he and the others were then turned over to the US military. He was held for 12 hours. The US has refused to comment on all this. Mudarrisi leads the Islamic Action Organization, which blew up things in Iraq during the 1980s. A lot of these leaders who are returning were in exile because they opposed Saddam with violence. It makes one worried that they will be all to willing to resort to it again if they become displeased with the US.

*Al-Tu`mah also says he will attend the leadership meeting scheduled for Saturday in Baghdad, called for by the earlier meeting at Nasiriya. He is the first Shiite leader I have seen who says he will attend He expressed confidence that SCIRI will be there "after a fashion," but so far it and other major Shiite groups have been boycotting meetings with American envoy Jay Garner. Al-Tu`mah belongs to the Harakat al-Marja`iyyah al-Risaliyyah (The Movement of the Clerical leader with a Mission--I presume this organization supports Sistani). He said that he had information that the US forces in Najaf had managed to arrest a number of those responsible for the killing of `Abd al-Majid Khu'i on April 10, but declined to identify the perpetrators. If it is true that supporters of Sistani have agreed to come to the Saturday meeting, that is an important development . . .



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*For my essay on the Shiite religious parties and factions in Iraq, see "Shiite Religious Parties Fill Vacuum in Southern Iraq" in Middle East Reports Online.

*Now some reporters for the Financial Times are saying that the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) in Iraq has taken over the largest theater and the Museum in Basra. From what I could tell from the scattered press reporting, Basra has been much less a site of the activity of the religious parties than Baghdad and the smaller Shiite cities, but now we hear about this sort of thing even there. The FT is claiming that Shaykh Muhammad al-Fartusi was released by US troops after being held for a while. The Cape Times say his aides confirmed his release. But other reporters have been unable to verify all this from US military spokesmen. It is very odd that there isn't a US government statement on the matter, which provoked two days of protests by thousands of Shiites in downtown Baghdad. One report I saw said he and two others were arrested coming back to Baghdad from consultations in Najaf in the middle of the night, in violation of curfew. Ash-Sharq al-Awsat says al-Fartusi used to be the agent (wakil) of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was killed by Uday's forces in 1999. The same source says that some speculate al-Fartusi was arrested to send a signal to the religious establishment in Najaf, a warning not to make anti-American statements. Al-Fartusi, it says, was released after negotiations between the US military and Najaf. The demonstrators have gone home, having seen al-Fartusi pass in a motorcade. "Otherwise," one said, "we would have stayed out here."

*Ash-Sharq al-Awsat says it is alleged that Badr Brigade troops of SCIRI are infiltrating Karbala, but the correspondent could not verify this because they were said to be wearing civilian clothes and to blend into the crowd. The same report says that the Marines in Kut have more or less resigned themselves to the SCIRI militia ruling that city.

*The Commemoration in Karbala of the 40th day after the martyrdom of Imam Husayn was well attended on Tuesday, with hundreds of thousands in attendance, and went off peacefully. I saw on television shots of US helicopters hovering watchfully overhead (the US military wisely decided not to have troops in the city during the commemoration, when tempers run hot). But there were some anti-American manifestations, including chants that the US should leave now, and some verbal attacks on Israel. Crowds chanted, "Yes, yes to Islam, no to America, no to colonialism and no to occupation." The Neoconservatives' dream of an Iraq that is pro-Israel and an American-style democracy may or may not be attainable, but it certainly won't be as easy as they thought it was.

*With Iraq being the big story, no one in the Western press seems interested in the situation in Pakistan, where the legislature has been virtually paralyzed by a struggle with "president" (actually a military dictator) Pervez Musharraf. He amended the constitution all by himself 19 times last summer. The majority of parliament does not accept the amendments, and won't get down to business unless they are repealed. Musharraf says they are a permanent part of the constitution. They give him enormous powers. This is not a good situation. The government looks shaky to me, and trouble in Pakistan could spell trouble for America's war on terror (remember that little enterprise?)

*Newt Gingrich had the nerve today to blame the poor State Department for the lack of progress in rebuilding Afghanistan. Uh, Newt, the Defense Department refused to let international peace keepers fan out from Kabul, so the country fell into warlord rule. That was a Rumsfeld decision. Without security, you can't rebuild roads. I cringe every time I remember that Gingrich has a Ph.D. in history. I promise, folks, most of us are not like that.




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*US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Monday, of the future of Iraq that he did not expect to see a theocracy there like that of Iran. "'There should be a country that is organized and arranged in a way that the various ethnic groups and religious groups are able to have a voice in their government in some form . . . And we hope (for) a system that will be democratic and have free speech and free press and freedom of religion.'' The problem is that a democratic Iraq would be one in which the Iraqi people, not Donald Rumsfeld, got to say how they run things. I personally think Iraq needs a relatively secular system to avoid falling apart, since Sunnis and Shiites would fight if the Shiites try to impose a theocracy. The two systems of law are not the same, and Sunnis would find rule by ayatollahs unbearable. But it is a crying shame that Rumsfeld had no real plan for Iraq after Saddam, and can only mouth these platitudes that seem awfully far away from the 40-day commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Husayn in Karbala.

*Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told the al-`Arabi Satellite TV channel, "I believe the government led by Americans in Iraq will not be acceptable (to Iran)." He added, "This is a matter that will not be accepted by the Iraqis." I noted that Jay Garner, head of the office of reconstruction in Iraq, today denied being the head of the country. He said the head would be an Iraqi, and that he hopes to wrap up his work in 3 months. It baffles me as to how the US is going to install a provisional government in only 3 months, that has a chance of presiding over free and fair elections two years later. The Bonn and Loya Jirga processes in Afghanistan were deeply flawed, and that country is still in chaos.

*It is a little bizarre that there has been no more news about the alleged arrest of Shaikh Muhammad al-Fartusi by Americans. One American officer said it sounded to him like a mix-up. There has been no independent confirmation of such an arrest. One news service reported that al-Fartusi was briefly held, then released. Others don't seem to know about this. Some 5,000 angry Shiites demonstrated about it in downtown Baghdad, so you would think the Americans would clear the situation up ASAP. But they haven't.

*Religious authorities in Karbala have come upon the files of the former Secret Police, and have decided to suppress them. They fear that if the identities of those spying on their coreligionists for Saddam became known, there would be an outbreak of reprisal killings. This is a very difficult issue. The Germans faced similar dilemmas when they came into possession of the Stasi records. The main difference between a free and democratic society and a repressed one is that in the latter the citizens are spied upon by the state. Everyone in power in the US should constantly remember this, and be reminded of it.

*

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*Breaking News US military forces arrested Shaikh Muhammad al-Fartusi and two other clerics at a Baghdad checkpoint. This arrest provoked a big demonstration of 5,000 Shiites in front of the Palestine Hotel. I saw it on Fox Cable News, as reported by Jennifer Eccleston. I could see placards in Arabic saying "We demand the release of Shaykh al-Fartusi by the American Forces." Al-Fartusi had been sent by the Najaf Establishment last week to the poor Shiite quarter of Baghdad, now called Sadr City, to preach the Friday prayer sermon at the al-Hikma Mosque to a congregation of 50,000. Al-Fartusi said in his sermon that the US could not impose a formal "democracy" on Iraq that allowed freedom of individual speech but denied Iraqis the ability to shape their own government. (Al-Fartusi appears to have an uncanny understanding of the principles of the Bush administration, domestically and abroad :-). He and his two colleagues went to Najaf on the weekend for consultations with Najaf, and were returning when the US troops arrested him at the checkpoint. I saw one report that said al-Fartusi is in the camp of Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Today, Reuters is saying that he is thought close instead to Muqtada al-Sadr and the Sadr Movement, which was implicated in the murder a week and a half ago of Abd al-Majid Khu'i, an American-backed cleric just arrived in Najaf from London. It remains to be seen whether this incident is a blip or the beginning of a major rift between the Shiite clerics and the US.


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*Tens of thousands of Iraqi Shiites continue to make their way to Karbala, the site of the shrine of Imam Husayn, to commemorate the 40th day after his martyrdom (which took place in 681). In Muslim societies it is common to mourn someone at his funeral and then to hold another ceremony 40 days later. Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has called on Shiites to turn Tuesday's commemoration into a political demonstration against the presence of US troops in Iraq. It remains to be seen whether many Iraqis will pay any attention to this demand, which strikes me as sacriligious. For Shiites, the martyrdom of Husayn is attended with some of the same sentiments as the passion of Christ on Good Friday in Christianity. A million or two pilgrims are expected, which could be explosive in a small town like Karbala. Tempers may run high, and after all people just lived through a brutalizing war. Will there be trouble?

*Ash-Sharq al-Awsat says that Iran's UN ambassador has been involved in whirlwind negotiations with the US, flying between New York and Tehran several times, seeking to improve relations. The Iranian regime fears it is next on the Bush hit list and wants to forestall an attack.

*It also has an eyewitness report from Sadr City, the 2- or 3-million strong Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad. The people she talked to there say they are followers of Muqtada al-Sadr and are entirely willing to wage a jihad against the US if the order came from Najaf. They blamed the US for having installed Saddam Hussein in power and kept him there. Although the story is more complex than that, recent revelations by journalists point in that direction.


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*The eight nations bordering Iraq met in Riyad and called for an early US withdrawal. They demanded that the US abide by the 4th Geneva Convention in providing security and basic needs to the population. They wanted assurances that Iraq's national unity would be preserved. They wanted Iraqis to govern themselves and assurances that the people of Iraq would control the disposition of their national resources. They desired to see an indigenous, democratic Iraqi government formed as soon as possible. They called for the UN to be allowed to play a role, and offered their own help to Iraq. They rejected US threats against Syria. They expressed support for Syria's proposal of a UN Security Council Resolution affirming that the Middle East should be made a zone free of weapons of mass destruction (the largest stockpile of which is held by Israel).

*The Taliban have regrouped in southern Afghanistan and have issued a threat against merchants who cooperate with the US, saying "they will pay dearly." Afghanistan is suffering a widespread breakdown of security that gives the lie to earlier US promises to reconstruct the country. And now the Taliban are threatening people again! Meanwhile Qalamuddin, the former head of the committee for the prevention of vice in Qandahar, was apprehended and the Karzai government is asking his victims to come forward. Meanwhile, the US is offering to mediate between Pakistan and Afghanistan after a border clash between the two last week. This is a sad commentary over a year after the Afghanistan war ended and 18 months after Pakistan allied with the US.

*Azerbaijan says it is sending 150 troops to Iraq to help keep order in the Shiite shrine cities of Karbala and Najaf, as well as Kirkuk and Mosul. Azerbaijan is a former Soviet Republic carved off from Iran by the Russian Empire in 1828, and most of its inhabitants are of Shiite heritage even though nowadays they are largely secular. Sending Azerbaijanis to keep order in the shrine cities, if it really comes about, is an extremely shrewd move by the US and Britain. Azerbaijan has bad relations with Iran, and its troops are mostly secular-minded, so they would be unlikely to bolster the theocratic forces of the Sadr Movement or the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.




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Some two million Shiites live in eastern Baghdad, and several factions are jockeying for influence with them. Press reports of local Shiite clerics in Baghdad organizing neighborhood militias to restore order after the looting of the weekend of April 11-12 quoted them as loyal either to the Najaf establishment (mainly Muqtada al-Sadr) or to al-Da`wa.

They have renamed the Baghdad Shiite slum, Saddam City, “Sadr City,” and it is patrolled by about 5,000 to 6,000 armed men under the direction of the mosques. One report said that Shiite gunmen loyal to al-Sadr in Najaf had chased off Badr Brigade militiamen sent by the Tehran-based al-Hakims of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq to infiltrate Sadr City. One Shaikh Ala’a of Sadr City warned Chalabi’s 'Free Iraqi Forces' not to come to the eastern quarter. 'There are a million men with guns who support Muqtada al-Sadr.' He said Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr had shown the way to an Islamic state.

In Sadr City on Friday April 18 Shaikh Muhammad Fartusi preached the Friday sermon at the al-Hikma Mosque to an estimated 50,000-strong congregation in the mosque and on surrounding streets. He had been sent to eastern Baghdad by the Najaf religious establishment to take charge (he follows Sistani but most of his congregation are Sadriyun). His guards patrolled with machine guns. He announced that Shiites would not accept a kind of democracy “that allows Iraqis to say what they want but gives them no say in their destiny. This form of government would be worse than that of Saddam Hussein.” He said Shiites should follow the instructions of the senior ayatollahs. The report said he “spelled out a code of conduct including a ban on music, mandatory veils for women and the primacy of Islamic over tribal law.”

Although Fartusi did not mention the US directly, the tenor of his remarks showed impatience with the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz plans to guide the formation of a new government over a period of two years or more. His fundamentalist program has the potential of provoking conflicts with urban middle class Sunnis, with professional women, and with even Shiite tribes, many of whom are proud of tribal traditions that are not Islamic.

Also on Friday, April 19, about 100 Shiite clerics met at a mosque in Sadr City to discuss security and aid for the capital’s Shiites. Early reports suggested that radicals attempted to take control of the meeting in a power play for authority over Sadr City. The identity of the radicals was not reported, but there are so many possibilities--Sadriyun, al-Da`wa, SCIRI, etc., etc.


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*Al-Hayat for April 18 has an interview with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf. It says that Sistani "affirmed his rejection of any foreign power after the war to which the country had been subjected." His son Muhammad Rida Sistani conveyed from his father "his rejection of any foreign power that would rule Iraq, emphasizing that he himself would not interfere with the form of the national government that the Iraqi people choose to rule the land." He said that his father is still in seclusion in Najaf. The son said his father's conception of religious leadership was that it must soar above factions and parties. He denied that his father had been protected by US troops, saying there were local Shiite youth (i.e. the tribesmen) available for the purpose. He called for unity among all Muslims--Sunni and Shiite-and among all Iraqis. He said he read his father accounts of Shiites attacking Sunni mosques in mixed neighborhoods. Grand Ayatollah Sistani immediately denounced such acts as sinful and said they should be seen against his own framework of love for the Sunnis and giving donations for the building or rebuilding of their mosques. He said the Grand Ayatollah had regretted the loooting of libraries, and had said that "Iraqi is for the Iraqis. They must administer Iraq, and it is not for them to do so under any foreign power." He ended by saying it had been the custom of the clerics of early last century to go to battle alongside their children against the British occupation. From a quietist such as Sistani, that last statement is very ominous indeed.

*The US military has discovered a mass grave site with some 1500 bodies near Kirkuk. Since they are unmarked, it is not clear what went on there, but thousands of Kurdish young men were made to disappear by the Saddam regime. This could be only one of many mass grave sites.

*Al-Hayat also ran an extensive denial by Muqtada al-Sadr's spokesman that he was behind the killing of Abd al-Majid Khu'i and Haydar Rafi`i Kalidar last week. He said Muqtada is in his thirties, not 22 as the press had reported, and that he was surrounded by respected disciples of his father. Muqtada has sought a meeting with Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Press reports had said that Sadriyun or supporters of Muqtada had threatened Sistani last weekend unless he left Najaf within 48 hours. Muqtada is also said to have called the leadership meeting in Nasiriya a "failure." He said only 10 of 19 provinces were represented and that the delegates were mainly expatriates out of touch with Iraqi realities. He said he did not expect the US to invite him to future such meetings.



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*I've just read several recent new reports on the Shiites of Iraq, and I am struck by how often people mention the authority they grant to the religious establishment in Najaf. Many members of the al-Da`wa party and supporters of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq appear to discount democracy in favor of letting the Najaf clerics give the orders. Or so they are saying to journalists. Since the Najaf establishment is hostile to a long-term US presence, this could be a problem for the Garner plan.

Kut has been taken over by a Shiite leader with ties to Iran, Said Abbas, and his armed militia may pose an obstacle to the choosing of a popularly selected leadership any time soon. Some 3000 Shiites in Samawah demonstrated in favor of the Najaf religious establishment. They carried pictures of Grand Ayatollah Sistani and the late Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr (assassinated 1999 by Saddam's forces). They chanted, "No to colonial occupation, no to America, blessed be Iraq!" They denied any rift bewteen Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr, and said both shoud be honored.

*Muhammad Husain Fadlu'llah of the Lebanese Shiite Hizbullah party attacked US motives in Iraq, saying that the Americans are there in order ultimately to impose a humiliating settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the Arab side.

*It is almost certain that a free political system in Iraq will empower
Iraqi Shiites. In turn, this will inevitably have an effect on Saudi
Shiites in al-Hasa and elsewhere (e.g. near Medina). For one thing,
Wahhabi policies of suppressing Shiite public religiosity may well meet
with strong representations from the Iraqi embassy in Riyadh. Ahsa'is
will go to Iraq for religious training and become politicized. There are
several hundred thousand Shiites in the Eastern Province and last I knew
many of the workers on the oil rigs were Shiite. They are therefore
important. They have been stiffed by Saudia, since although they
live over the petroleum, the Wahhabis and Sunnis have been the main
beneficiaries of it, while they are less well off.

If Arab Shiism is unchained in Iraq, and that forces the Saudis to move
toward greater pluralism in treatment of the Shiites (and that treatment
has improved since 1986 anyway), this change could further enrage Wahhabis
and Salafis against the princes.

I saw a press report last winter with an interview of Ahsa'i Shiites who
were hoping a free Iraq would improve their fortunes. Shiites are a small
minority in Saudia, but they are strategically located. This issue is
only one, probably secondary, consideration in Saudi officials'
apprehensions of developments in Iraq.


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AFP and ash-Sharq al-Awsat are reporting that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani (73) in Najaf issued a statement through is son, Muhammad Rida Ali Sistani, calling for Iraq to be government by "the best of its sons" (khirat abna'ihi). “It is for Iraqis to choose who governs; we want them to control the country.” The son added his own comment: “The Americans are welcome but I don’t think that it’s a good thing that they stay for long.” Sistani is thus throwing his considerable authority against the administration of Iraq by Jay Garner and an American shadow cabinet. While the opposition of more hardline groups like the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution (SCIRI) in Iraq might have been contained, I don't know how the Bush administration can go against the will of the Grand Ayatollah in a largely Shiite country without facing a good deal of trouble.

*Meanwhile, IslamOnline.net says it received a statement from Shaikh Muhammad Mahdi al-Khalisi (b. 1938) of Karbala, saying: "Now that the idol (statue of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein) has been pulled down, the occupation troops should leave our country. Iraq had gone astray 40 years ago and it is high time it came home . . . In the name of all scholars and leaders of the Shiite Najafi revolution in Iraq, who paid the ultimate sacrifice in defending Iraq against the occupation of 1914 and 1920, I urge all Iraqis to stand shoulder to shoulder to prevent occupation troops and foil malicious plots weaved by Washington and London from looting the fruits of such sacrifices." The online site characterized this as a call for jihad against the Americans, but that seems to me a little sensational. On the other hand, it is not good news for the Garner plan. The Khalisis played a key role in the failed 1920 revolution against the British in Iraq.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz trumpeted the non-existent "fatwa" attributed to Sistani earlier, as "the first pro-American fatwa." But it was probably just an oral statement, not a formal ruling; and it was hardly the first such statement by a Muslim cleric. What will Wolfowitz of Arabia make of these two statements that came out from senior ayatollahs today?

Given all the trouble the Americans are already having from the al-Sadr and al-Khalisi families, they may be interested to know it was the same for the British. Of Sir Percy Cox's Draconian suppression of the 1920 revolt, Gertrude Bell wrote, "Telegrams and reports come in from the provinces all saying that Sir Percy's action is universally approved. Sharp action has been taken in Diwaniyah [Diwaniyah, Ad] and Shamiyah [Shamiyah, Ash] to establish law and order, and after bombing raids by air all the extremist tribal leaders have made submission - except 'Abdul Wahid who has no tribal following and will probably give way in the the next day or two. In fact it has been decisively proved that we were right and the King wrong when we said that firm action with the extremists would bring them instantly to heel. Sir Percy's greatest triumph has been with the two dangerous 'alims of Kadhimain [(Al Kazimiyah)], Saiyid Muhammad Sadr and Shaikh Muhammad Mahdi al Khalisi. He sent them word that he was ever careful to safeguard the honour of religious dignitaries and that to save him from the painful duty of exiling them by force, he advised them to travel to Persia (they are Persian subjects.) They left on the night of the 29th." I don't think nowadays it will be so easy to get rid of the Khalisis and the Sadrs.

*A meeting of Iraqi notables at Ur near Nasiriya has produced a 13-point document calling for the dissolution of the Baath Party and the establishment of democratic federalism in Iraq. The US picked the groups who would be represented, and the groups picked their delegates.

The most organized Shiite group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, boycotted the meeting. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a leader of SCIRI, said according to David Espo of the Canadian Press, "Iraq needs an Iraqi interim government. Anything other than this tramples the rights of the Iraqi people and will be a return to the era of colonization." .

And according to Reuters *thousands* of the largely Shiite residents of nearby Nasiriya staged a protest rally against the prospect of an American occupation of Iraq (which is being planned by Washington to last 2-3 years, at least). They shouted, "No to America, no to Saddam." Thousands? protesting US presence already? That isn't a good sign. Were these loyalists to the al-Hakim family, which runs SCIRI? Is SCIRI, which has broken with and threatened the US forces, that important?

The Canadian Press reports that even some of the delegates at Ur oppose US plans. They reject an American administration headed by Jay Garner. Espo writes, "Ibrahim al-Jaafari, one of the leaders of the Daawa party, an influential Shiite group, turned down his invitation. 'We have our reservations against attending a meeting called for by a military side,' he said."

*I wrote to one of my lists about the looting of the Iraq Museum and National Library:

The US government was advised repeatedly by scholars of Iraq about the need to protect the Museum and archives, and this advice was received at the highest levels. The Museum had been partially looted in the 1991 uprising, so this was not a surprise. I know for a fact that the uniformed side of the Pentagon was deeply concerned about the prospect of urban disorder, looting and reprisal killings when the time came for the regime to collapse.

One problem was that the US military has no mobile gendarmerie that could be inserted into such situations. Some European allies do, but most of them either were not on board with the war or were not invited to coordinate with the Anglo-British forces in this way.

But, even with this handicap, the US forces were perfectly capable of guarding the *Oil Ministry* buildings, just by stationing a tank outside them. At one point for two hours looting of the Museum was deterred in a similar manner, but then the tank was inexplicably called back. It was not that the US military could not have performed this task because of continued insecurity. Some sort of decision was taken about what was important and what was not.

I personally cannot escape the conclusion that this monumental tragedy for Iraq's national history was the result of Rumsfeld's willful ignoring of all the warnings received and the unilateralism with which the Anglo-American forces proceeded. I put most of the blame on the civilians at the head of the Department of Defense.

I do not think any American can fully understand the emotional shock of it. Not only are thousands of antiquities gone, but so too are all the manuscripts and archival documents on which early modern and modern Iraqi history writing could have been based. Nor do I think the Iraqi intellectual class will soon forget or forgive this travesty.

I suspect for the US to allow the looting of Iraq's archeological and manuscript heritage was in fact a contravention of the Fourth Geneval Convention of 1949. The US was the occupying power when the looting occurred, even if there were pockets of resistance (none to my knowledge have been alleged at the Museum site). It is certainly is a contravention of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict ( http://www.icomos.org/hague/ ).

In short, we can say of the complete loss of Iraqi national history: It was foreseen; it was preventable; it was horribly stupid and tragic; it will have long-term negative effects on the Iraqi perception of the US role; and it contravened international law.






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Iraqi Shiites in the slums of Baghdad, which were once called al-Thawrah Towship and then Saddam City, have now renamed their neighborhood Sadr City after the martyred Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was assassinated by the Baathists in 1999. There are reports of local Shiite clerics like Ali al-Shawki, arming followers and establishing neighborhood militias to restore order. Shawki told AFP, "We thank the Americans if they came here to liberate us . . . But if they are here to colonize us, we will regard them as enemies and fight them with all means.” Apparently most Shiites feel this way, which augurs badly for the future, since Rumsfeld intends to have the Pentagon run Iraq for a while. One local Shiite in Sadr city said that the community in Baghdad takes its orders from the religious hierarchy in Najaf. But he did not specify if he meant Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani or someone else.



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The Iraq war has resulted in many human casualties that make any humane person want to weep. I hope the human sacrifice will have been worth it; certainly Saddam's regime was virtually genocidal and it is a great good thing that it is gone. But the continued urban looting is an indictment of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz's carelessness. The biggest cultural tragedy in this regard is the complete loss of the thousands of treasures and artifacts at the Baghdad Museum. Piotr Michalowski points out that this would be like the loss of the Louvre in a single day. Apparently all of Iraq's more recent historical documents are also gone. The country has been robbed of the key sources of its historical identity by US insouciance. This is a war crime under the provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. No one who cares about the history and sources of world civilization can fail to weep today, and to rage against Rummy's glib dismissal of the travesty as a little "untidiness." Now many Baghdad merchants are saying they lost so much inventory they cannot even open. So much for 'getting back to normal.'

--

It was suggested on a list I'm on that some of the motives for the infighting among clerical families in Najaf has to do with payment of religious taxes by lay followers.

It seems to me as a distant observer that this motivation is less likely than others in the current Iraqi context. As I understand it, when Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr was assassinated in 1999, some of his followers in Najaf remained loyal to him and became known as Sadriyun. They developed a doctrine that it was forbidden to follow the rulings of anyone but al-Sadr. Since in Usuli Shiism it is forbidden to follow the rulings of a dead jurisprudent; and since multiple objects of emulation are the norm, the Sadriyun were here behaving in an unorthodox way.

Over time they came to give some loyalty as well to al-Sadr's son Muqtada [this is the correct spelling], who is now 22 and therefore was just a teenager when his father was killed by Saddam's agents. This investment of such a young man with a cult of personality strikes me as extremely odd. One report I read said that Muqtada organized especially among the very poor Shiites in Najaf (a city of about 560,000). Muqtada is said to be pro-Iranian and virulently anti-American, and to have deeply opposed the US invasion. That is, he is closer with regard to international politics to the positions recently taken by the Iran-based Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

So if these various reports, which I have combined, are true, then what we have in the Sadriyun is a sect in the classical Weberian sense of the word--a lower-class charismatic community centered on absolutist doctrines and authoritarian leadership that would be viewed as heterodox by the mainstream "church" of the upper middle and wealthy classes.

The Sadriyun could have been expected to react violently to the appearance of Abd al-Majid Khu'i in Najaf and his attempt to secure control over the Mosque of Ali (by reconciling the population to Haydar Rafi`i Kalidar, the shrine keeper whom they viewed as a collaborator with Saddam). Khu'i represented the old comfortable mainstream of Najaf society and was clearly working for a reconciliation with the Americans as well as with local traditional elites like the Kalidars. His positions were "church-like" in sociological terms. He was positioning himself as a spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Sistani, now the main object of emulation and therefore a man especially objectionable to the sectarian Sadriyun, who want to enshrine al-Sadr as the only legitimate source of religious authority.

I suspect that the deportation by Saddam of over 100,000 Iranian-heritage Iranians, many of them from great-merchant families; and the impoverishment of the shrine cities since the rebellion of 1991, has rather weakened the religious-tax system and greatly reduced its income. I don't have a sense that it means that much for rural Iraqis.

My guess is that Muqtada al-Sadr is competing for power and charisma, and for a chance to shape the future of Iraqi Shiites, not just for staid collection plates.



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*Khu'i appears to have been killed in Najaf by a mob of radical followers of the 22-year-old Muqtada al-Sadr. His father had been a supporter of Khomeini in Iran, and the links to pro-Iran radicalism I speculated about yesterday are being confirmed by al-Jazeera and Reuters. This factionalism in Najaf, and the loss of the moderate Khu'i, are both big setbacks for the US. He was apparently trying to protect Haydar Rafi`i Kalidar, the shrine keeper, from a mob following Muqtada, and chanting his name. They also chanted against Khu'i, who they thought was asserting religious leadership. al-Jazeera is saying that the radical followers of al-Sadr are threating the two grand Ayatollahs, Ali Sistani and Sa`id al-Hakim, in Najaf, and insisting that they leave the city within 48 hours.

There appears to have been no fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Sistani on not opposing the US. It is possible he made such a statement orally to persons in contact with Khu'i, but his office denies a formal ruling. It was Khu'i who said that there had been such a fatwa. That may be another reason he was killed.

The breakdown of order and widespread looting in Iraqi cities continues. The US government knew there would be this problem, and just did not prepare for it sufficiently. If they had been more patient and gotten the Europeans on their side, some of them have mobile gendarmeries that could have been inserted to keep order. The US military lacks such a capacity. Would it really have mattered if the war had started in September? Rumsfeld's umbrage at criticism on this issue is misplaced. Under the 4th Geneva Convention, the US as occupying power is responsible for ensuring order and the security of life and property. It is failing in that responsibility so far.



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The events around the assassination of Shiite leader Abd al-Majid Khu'i in Najaf a couple of days ago remain murky. From what I can tell, though, Khu'i got involved in trying to defend a man named Kalidar, the keeper of Ali's shrine in Najaf, from an angry crowd who was accusing him of having collaborated with Saddam's regime. The charges were said to be coming in particular from followers of the late Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who had been assassinated by Saddam's men in 1999. It is possible that Kalidar avoided assassination by collaboration and that this is known and resented in the city. Khu'i apparently fired a pistol in the air a couple of times to disperse the mob. But they were close enough to crowd in on him and Kalidar and to hack them to pieces with knives. Khu'i may have died because he was trying to reconcile Shiite factions who are irreconcilable now that Saddam is gone. Because Khu'i was apparently America's man in Najaf and because he failed so signally and so early in his task, this incident seems a bad omen for the future. And, the thing I wonder about is whether al-Sadr's followers are in some way aligned with Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq somehow. If that were the case, the incident would be even more sinister, since al-Hakim is in Tehran and aligned with Iran's hardliners.


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*Madinat Saddam, a Shiite area of 2 million in Baghdad, had already tossed out the Iraqi militiamen two days ago, it turns out. These desperately poor slum dwellers had suffered massacres as recently as 1999, when they rose up in protest against Saddam's assassination of Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. I suspect their first order of business is to rename their municipality.

*Lebanon announced the arrest of five fundamentalist terrorists who were planning attacks on fast food restaurants, embassies, and other America-related targets in that country. They have apparently already carried out a number of such bombings in the past year. They are described as Lebanese (i.e. not Palestinians), and as fundamentalists; I take it they are Sunnis or it would have been mentioned. And, they are said not to be connected to al-Qaeda. So what Sunni Lebanese organization is undertaking terrorism against US targets?

*The prominent Shiite cleric Muhammad Husayn Fadlu'llah warned the Palestinians to become united if they were to avoid America's plans for them in the wake of the fall of Iraq. The Palestinians' lack of unity does not help anything. But they are a small weak poor people, much poorer now than 2 years ago, and even if they were united they are unlikely to be able to avoid having others' plans thrust on them. What worries me is that the Arab world is clearly full of the same despair voiced by Fadlu'llah, and despair and humiliation breed terrorism.

*Scott Pelley is reporting that the situation is still rather dire in Basra, where there is extensive looting and disorder, and where potable water, food and other necessities are in short supply. He quotes Iraqis as saying: ' One local man put it in limited but succinct English. "English invade Basra. No anything. Why?" [Is it better with Saddam gone?:] "No, no," he said. "Water no good. No water, no good." A man called Kasim told us there is no medicine in the hospitals, and there are no cops on the beat. And, he said, "At night there is a big number of thieves." ' He says that looting is now the city's major industry. And now the Red Cross has pulled out of Baghdad because of disorder there. The coalition needs to restore order to these cities if it is to have any political credibility.

The difficulty comes about because the US and the UK do not have mobile gendarmeries that can step in to handle such situations. Some European countries do, but they were not on board with this invasion. It is another reason for which getting a UN umbrella would have been better.




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*The British forces in Basra have announced that the battle for that city has just about ended. They have taken most of the important government buildings and have 4000 troops with 200 tanks inside the city. Some Fedayee Saddam guerrillas still lurk in the twisting alleyways, but the populace has apparently lost all fear of them, and is openly welcoming the British troops and helping them destroy posters and statues of Saddam. Late reports say the British have appointed a local notable to govern the city. He is being called a "sheik" but I suspect they just mean prominent city elder.

*Warren Strobel is reporting that the US State Department and CIA are furious that Rumsfeld and others at the Defense Department flew Ahmad Chalabi and a thousand fighters to Iraq and set them up at an airport near Nasiriya. State and the Company are convinced that Chalabi is corrupt and unreliable. They thought they had forestalled his installation as leader of Iraq, but Rummy and gang "just did it anyway."

*Iran's parliament passed a bill allowing the elected President, Khatami, to over-ride the judicial review of the appointed Guardianship Council. The Council has the power to strike down laws passed by parliament that it feels contradict Islamic law (read: their hardline views of politics). Of course, the Guardianship Council says it will simply strike down this new law attempting to limit its purview. Hardliners in Iran's judiciary have closed 90 liberal newspapers and journals, have sentenced outspoken writers to imprisonment or even death, and have even had 3 members of parliament arrested for speeches given on the floor of parliament (contradicting article 86 of the Iranian constitution). The Guardianship Council had better be careful about acting too high-handedly. The winds of change are blowing.

*The Emir of Qatar has suggested that a permanent council on Christian-Muslim dialogue be created, with its seat in Doha. The last time there was an important Christian-Muslim dialogue movement was in Lebanon during the late '60s and early '70s. I would never have expected a Wahhabi emir to argue for such a thing. I hope something comes of his idea; it would be an important institution.




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*The British forces in Basra have announced that the battle for that city has just about ended. They have taken most of the important government buildings and have 4000 troops with 200 tanks inside the city. Some Fedayee Saddam guerrillas still lurk in the twisting alleyways, but the populace has apparently lost all fear of them, and is openly welcoming the British troops and helping them destroy posters and statues of Saddam. Late reports say the British have appointed a local notable to govern the city. He is being called a "sheik" but I suspect they just mean prominent city elder.

*Warren Strobel is reporting that the US State Department and CIA are furious that Rumsfeld and others at the Defense Department flew Ahmad Chalabi and a thousand fighters to Iraq and set them up at an airport near Nasiriya. State and the Company are convinced that Chalabi is corrupt and unreliable. They thought they had forestalled his installation as leader of Iraq, but Rummy and gang "just did it anyway."

*Iran's parliament passed a bill allowing the elected President, Khatami, to over-ride the judicial review of the appointed Guardianship Council. The Council has the power to strike down laws passed by parliament that it feels contradict Islamic law (read: their hardline views of politics). Of course, the Guardianship Council says it will simply strike down this new law attempting to limit its purview. Hardliners in Iran's judiciary have closed 90 liberal newspapers and journals, have sentenced outspoken writers to imprisonment or even death, and have even had 3 members of parliament arrested for speeches given on the floor of parliament (contradicting article 86 of the Iranian constitution). The Guardianship Council had better be careful about acting too high-handedly. The winds of change are blowing.

*The Emir of Qatar has suggested that a permanent council on Christian-Muslim dialogue be created, with its seat in Doha. The last time there was an important Christian-Muslim dialogue movement was in Lebanon during the late '60s and early '70s. I would never have expected a Wahhabi emir to argue for such a thing. I hope something comes of his idea; it would be an important institution.




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*Humanitarian disaster may loom in Basra if something isn't done quickly. The city has fallen to British forces and some of the population has turned on Baath enforcers, killing them. But despite their evident joy at being liberated, the people of the city are thirsty. They do not have access to clean water, and will be tempted to drink badly polluted river water; the river "is where sewage is dumped" according to the UNICEF spokesman. The 100,000 children under the age of five are now exposed to the risks of dehydration, diarrhea, and possible death. All this is despite the British having delivered thousands of bottles of drinking water to southern Iraq from Kuwait. Looting has broken out on a vast scale, with the poor carrying away everything that isn't nailed down from the nicer hotels and other businesses. There has been a run on the Central Bank, but not of the traditional kind--people are just carrying away its holdings. That this sort of thing should be happening a day after the city fell is perhaps not surprising, but if it is still going on later this week it will take a lot of the sheen off the victory. And, the Americans should beware of letting Baghdad fall into a similar state. WHO is warning that Iraqi hospitals are so overburdened that there is now an increased danger of disease outbreaks.

*Reuters is reporting that 3,000 Iranian clergymen and seminary students demonstrated in Qom on Tuesday to protest the presence of US troops in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. They chanted "Death to America" and "Death to warmongers" and set fire to a coffin draped with US and British flags. Conservative Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami (no relation of the president's) is quoted as saying, “The occupation of those cities by infidels is condemned and is an attack against Shiites in the world. America and Britain, by ignoring all the international rules, are acting like Hitler,” Classes were all cancelled at the seminaries for the demonstration (though note that 3,000 is not a big turn out--there are tens of thousands of seminary students in Qom). Ominously, they asked permission from Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei to go to the shrine cities to protect them from the infidels. Iran is so far cooperating with the US demand that no one be allowed to cross over to Iraq from Iran while the war is going on. But after the war is over, the pilgrimage trade of Iranians to the shrine cities will start up again, and this traffic is going to present severe problems to US troops if they insist on remaining at these holy sites. For the US to rule Iraq means it is ruling the Shiite shrine cities, and this is going to cause trouble. It could cause a very great deal of trouble.

*Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri blasted the US Tuesday for reverting to the Law of the Jungle in attacking Iraq without UN sanction and for heaping abuse on the world body. Note that Indonesia only gained something like real democracy about three years ago, and that Mrs. Megawati was known as a friend of the US and a moderate. Paul Wolfowitz, who used to be US ambassador to Indonesia, seems to have been hoping for its current state to be a model for a liberalizing Muslim world. But note that there have been absolutely huge anti-war demonstrations in Jakarta (300,000 strong according to press reports), and now the president is denouncing us. The Bush administration just never "got it" about the UN. It was worth waiting a little bit to get that Security Council majority. The US has lost major good will and legitimacy by proceeding in the teeth of world opinion. It did not have to be this way. And, note that the US is having to loudly tell India, "Do as I say and not as I do." The Indians say that they could use the same arguments Bush put forward about Iraq to justify a preemptive strike on Pakistan, which they regard as a sponsor of terrorism in Kashmir and as a military regime addicted to weapons of mass destruction. The US does not have any moral authority left in lecturing the Indians on restraint.

*Likewise, the Pakistani fundamentalist parties have parlayed their anti-American rhetoric and rallies into increased popularity even with secular voters. One effect of the US military operations of the past year and a half has been to empower the teachers of the Taliban in Pakistan. Meanwhile, the Taliban of Afghanistan have regrouped and made several strikes at the Karzai government lately. When Afghanistan has elections, if it does, who do you think is going to win in Paktia Province?




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*For anyone who hasn't been near news this morning, the US military has taken several key sites in downtown Baghdad in a dramatic show of force. Taking and pacifying a city of 5 million will take some time, but apparently the Iraqi military has collapsed to the point where the US can just walk into any major government building it likes. They are talking of 15,000 staying downtown to do whatever it takes "to change the government." This thrust comes only a day after the British Desert Rats moved similarly into Basra, meeting only sporadic resistance (three British troops died in the resistance). We finally got to see grainy videophone images of Basra Shiites celebrating yesterday, something that I, at least, expected rather earlier in the war. US troops also secured the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, killing 400 Republican Guards. Lt. Col. Bill Bennett said that the city was "like a carnival" in the aftermath, with thousands of cheering, smiling residents. Asharq al-Awsat reports from Karbala that the US troops carefully avoided firing on the shrines of Imam Husayn and of Abbas, even though the Fedayee Saddam fired on them from those sites.

*In the Shiite city of Samawah, the US at last report had still not established control, but a Shiite rebellion broke out, taking control of the secret police headquarters. Also in the town of Rifa`i there was a peaceful Shiite uprising , with local people belonging to the tribes of ash-Shuwaylat and ar-Rikab taking control of the city when the main Baathist officials had fled. The US had been cultivating tribal leaders and had expected such uprisings earlier, but better late than never. For some reason neither of these popular movements was being reported in the main Western media that I followed on Sunday.

* When I talked about the war to a University of Michigan classroom the night it was scheduled to begin, I was asked whether this war might not be rather different from Afghanistan in involving larger US losses and risking Iraqi use of weapons of mass destruction. I admitted those possibilities, but suggested that US superiority is such that I would be very surprised if we were still fighting on April 15. I pointed out that Iraqi assets were limited, including 2200 tanks, 2000 artillery pieces, and a similar number of armored vehicles; and that without air cover, they were doomed to see all of them attrited over a fairly short period of time, at which point they would lack the wherewithal to resist a coalition advance. For everyone's sake, I hope I was right. As I write these words, it looks as though it is all over but the mopping up and the taking of Kirkuk and Mosul in the north.

*What I worry about in the aftermath, especially in the Sunni urban areas in the middle of the country, is suicide bombings and other nonconventional harrying of our troops by Fedayee Saddam and by jihadi volunteers. It seems unlikely that such operations could be militarily important, but they could be politically important and must be guarded against. Worse, it is a long term potential problem if, as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz pledged today, a US military administration of Iraq will last for longer than 6 months. US officials are cocky about all this, according to Time, saying that if terrorists come to Iraq it will be easier to kill them there than anywhere else. Maybe right now. But if 18 months from now the poor Shiites in al-Thawrah township are really infuriated about US govt policies in Iraq and feel they have been stiffed, and if the Lebanese Hizbullah can infiltrate them and stir them up against the US, I don't actually think it will be easy for the Pentagon to deal with the sort of resulting urban guerrilla threats that could emerge. If the Bush administration has any sense, it will get out of direct administration of Iraq before such a scenario could unfold.

*Another more immediate problem is the establishment of public order. There are reports of extensive looting in Basra, and Baghdad could well fall into such a state as well. Troops are not police, and poor people in such situations will often see if they can steal their way into the middle class. We need to avoid a Panama-city type situation (such as developed when the US captured Noriega) to avoid a PR black eye. It should be remembered that the US overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan has not led to notable law and order in that country. In fact recent reports are of a "crime wave" that is preventing international aid organizations from operating there. Since many Afghans are one UN food shipment away from starvation, that is a dire situation. The US has obligations to Afghanistan not only by dint of its pledges but also by international law (the 4th Geneva Accords), and they are quite frankly not being met. I remember Wolfowitz coming on television during the Afghanistan war and making all those pledges about the country's future, which he has not followed through on, and so I have to be a little skeptical that he is really going to succeed in turning Iraq into paradise. Not to mention that both the rise of the jihadis in Afghanistan and the building up of Saddam by the US in the 1980s were in some part his responsibility in the first place. How ironic, that his far rightwing agenda should now be so strongly benefiting from having to fix its own past egregious mistakes.

*There are reports that the coalition has flown Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi to southern Iraq, along with about 1,000 INC fighters. These latter are expected to help clean up the lingering resistance in the south from Saddam partisans and to form the nucleus of a new Iraqi national army. Presumably they can also be called on to begin providing some security in the Shiite cities of the south.




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*Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are giving Jordan three months of its oil supplies free to make up for the interruption of its petroleum imports from Iraq. Jordan is being economically hurt by the Iraq war, and its people are boiling over with rage about it. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have just made an extremely important contribution to the US war effort, in helping Jordan avoid economic problems that would otherwise threaten its security. This sort of thing is the reason for which the neocons like Richard Perle, who dream of ousting Saudi Arabia from the good graces of Washington, will probably fail. The Saudis may not be letting us fire Tomahawks over their heads, but they are pumping 9 million barrels a day instead of 7 million barrels a day, to make up for the Iraq oil that is now off the market and avoid huge price rises that would hurt Western economies. And now they are helping Jordan in this way.

*Colin Powell in an interview with al-Hayat of London said he doubted the US would blockade Baghdad, a city of 5 million, as a way of conquering it. He also said he hoped that soon it would be apparent to everyone in the Arab world that Saddam was a tyrant undeserving of their admiration. The al-Hayat interviewer suggested that no one in the Arab world admired Saddam, but that they didn't exactly admire US policies [i.e. giving Israeli PM Ariel Sharon a blank check to occupy and collectively punish the Palestinians] either. Powell said that the US was going to make an effort to change all that. He also gave post-war Afghanistan as an example of how the US respects the wishes of the people and respects Islam, saying that Hamid Karzai was freely chosen by the Loya Jirga.

Well, look, Colin Powell is a good man, and I admire him, but he has lately started engaging in a good deal of propaganda that diminishes his stature. Hamid Karzai was shoe-horned into power by the US and everyone knows it. And, the Karzai model is not even the one that the US currently has in mind for Iraq! The American secretaries-general of the various Iraqi ministries are already in Kuwait.

As for the Bush administration doing anything even handed on the Arab-Israeli front, don't hold your breath. 1) Bush appointed Elliot Abrams as the point man on that issue on the National Security Council; Abrams is probably to the *right* of Sharon and has fired all the high-level NSC staffers who know anything serious about Arab-Israeli stuff and might buck the direction he takes. (Abrams was convicted of perjuring himself during Iran-Contra and should not be holding high office anyway). 2) Bush is not going to do anything on the Arab-Israeli front before the '04 election because it would be politically risky. And 3) Bush is highly unlikely ever to buck Sharon (why he has suddenly become "whipped" on this issue is beyond me. So, Powell's assurances on this score are empty. I don't see the Arab and Muslim rage toward the US subsiding any time soon, and I certainly don't see the Bush administration assuaging it. In fact, I very much fear that the combination of the Iraq war, drift to fundamentalism in South Asia, and Sharon's frankly fascist policies in the Occupied Territories are likely to produce more anti-American terrorism and more American ripostes, so that the whole thing ratchets out of control.

*Sharon has taken advantage of the focus on the Iraq war to continue to violate the 4th Geneva Convention in the West Bank by engaging in collective punishment. See The Palestine Monitor for examples of what I mean.

*I am assured that Abd al-Majid Khu'i is in fact in Najaf. He is well spoken of as a moderate and an excellent liason for the US to the Iraqi Shiites, though some fear that his American connections will eventually make him unpopular in Iraq. That remains to be seen.



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*With news of the advance of the US Third Army to the edges of Baghdad and the fall of the airport, it is easy to forget how much of Iraq the Anglo-British forces do not control. The British have just crossed the Shatt al-Basra waterway and have established a beachhead in southern Basra proper for the first time, about 4 miles from the city center. They still face shelling and sniping from about 1,000 Iraqi Republican Guardsmen and Fedayee Saddam irregulars. Their gradual inching forward into the city has been cited as a possible model for the US advance on Baghdad. It is hard to find out what exactly is going on in Hindiya, Karbala, Hillah or Kut, but one has the sense that as they advanced to Baghdad the American forces had to leave substantial smaller forces in its rear to contain (but not necessarily to take) southern Shiite cities. The Iraqi strategy of trying to pin down most invading troops in this way has failed, since substantial forces were nevertheless free to advance on the capital. But it is being said that Gen. Tommy Franks now has a choice to make between pushing forward with a relatively week front line or waiting for reinforcements.

*Asharq al-Awsat says that Hujjat al-Islam Abd al-Majid al-Khu'i, a prominent Shiite clergyman long resident in London at the Khu'i Foundation, has shown up in Najaf, provoking concern among hardliners in Iran. They felt that his appearance in the city was a sign of American backing, since he is known as a moderate. In contrast, Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, is stuck in Tehran and has not been able to have his Badr Brigade play a role in the liberation of the country. Al-Hakim is close to conservative/radical Ayatolloh Ali Khamenei, the supreme jurisprudent in Iran. Al-Khu'i was booed when he spoke in Iran last winter and said that one realistically had to deal with the Americans. Another report said that after so many years of house arrest, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf seemed dazed and unable yet to take on the responsibilities of his office, although he was being besieged by local Shiites for advice. The disputed fatwa of Sistani asking Shiites not to interfere with the US troops was confirmed by the Khu'i Foundation . . .

*Last fall Iranian president Khatami presented a bill to parliament that would allow for free parliamentary elections, abolishing the process whereby candidates are screened out by clerical hardliners for not being sufficiently "Islamic." The parliament passed the bill into law, but now it is being challenged, predictably enough, by the clerical hardliners. They are afraid it will let 'counter-revolutionary' elements into parliament. So far, every time the reformers have tried to open up the system, the hardliners have closed it back down. But the hardliners had better start being careful . . . Bush administration hawks have them in their sights. They are already beating war drums, claiming Iran is planning to send paramilitary squads into Iraq to kill US soldiers, and that it is actively pursuing nuclear weapons. I agree that the hardline ayatollahs should be gotten rid of, but I think it would be better if the Iranians themselves accomplished this. If it comes from the outside, it will lack legitimacy. Anyone remember the shah? Meanwhile Khatami has warned that the Iraq war will contribute to more terrorism.





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Well, the latest reports still are saying that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf issued a fatwa or legal ruling today that urges Shiites not to interfere with the US troops as they take control of Iraq.

The confusion was caused by al-Jazeera, which carried a denial. It is not impossible that the confusion is deliberate on the part of Sistani's staff. Sistani has been under enormous pressure from the Baath regime for over a decade. An assassination attempt was launched on him by the Baath in 1996. His colleague, Grand Ayatollah Sadr, was assassinated in 1999, provoking widespread unrest in Shiite areas. In September of 2002 Sistani was forced to issue a fatwa calling on Shiites to oppose the US.

Brig. General Vincent Brooks had said at CENTCOM in Qatar that the new fatwa marks a turning point in the war.

US forces in Najaf are said to be negotiating with Sistani about the administration of the city for the time being. An ugly confrontation between GIs and local Shiites afraid they would move on the shrine of Imam Ali was narrowly averted. It still amazes me that I could see scenes like that on television almost in real time. The troops wisely backed off.


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*The Shiite expatriate group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq in Tehran, has condemned the Baath regime of Iraq for putting its soldiers into the mosque complex at the shrine of Imam `Ali in Najaf. This was a ploy to trick the US into shelling the shrine, in a bid to turn the Iraqi Shiites and others around the world against the US. The US military is not falling for it, and neither are the Iraqi Shiites. But, the Iraqi propaganda apparatus is attempting to give the Muslim world the false idea that the US has in fact shelled the shrine. Actually, it just hit the Baath party headquarters, which had been built nearby.

*Jim Hoaglund in the Washington Post is reporting that the CIA had spread tens of millions of dollars among the Iraqi tribes in hopes of getting them to revolt against Saddam and join the Americans. CIA director George Tenet had such representations from them. But in the end, the vast majority of them seem to have just pocketed the money and stayed quiet. Anthony Shadid reports that one reason for which the Basra and other urban Shiites haven't rebelled is that the $15 a month they were being paid by the regime to serve as spies was their main hope for an income in the 1990s and early zeroes. The UN sanctions helped drive the economy into penury, and Saddam made use of the fact to buy the population's loyalty. Likewise, the large number of spies and Fedayee Saddam keep the population afraid of the regime. News is getting to Baghdad from Basra about who is loyal, and reprisals can be ordered. Of course, the likelihood is that most Shiites just don't want their country invaded by a foreign power. The US troops seem to be getting an unusually warm welcome in Najaf, though.

*At a rally of tens of thousands in Quetta, Pakistan, leaders of the fundamentalist MMA coalition condemned the United States for its war in Iraq. This stance gives them street popularity and costs them nothing, since they aren't doing anything practical. They are just holding rallies and giving angry speeches. But, their visibility on the issue could help them in the next parliamentary elections. They've already gone from being a perennial joke in Pakistani parliamentary politics to being a force to reckon with. Many are close in ideology to the Taliban and their growing popularity is dangerous for the US.

*Tony Blair is urging that Iraqis rule Iraq after the war. The US at the moment is committed to an open-ended American (read: Defense Department) administration of the country. Retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner will run Iraq, and Rummy wants his buddy James Woolsey in the "cabinet" of the American Government of Iraq (well, that's the diction--we spoke of the "British Government of India). Woolsey out and out lied about supposed links between Saddam and 9/11. He has also characterized this phase of history as World War IV, a war between the US and the Muslim world. Yeah, he'd be real popular in post-war Iraq. I hope he testified to Congress about his fantasies of Saddam and 9/11, and that someday someone will nail him for perjury. The aid NGO's are all complaining that they can't work with the US military in helping rebuild Iraq--as a matter of principle or statute. They want reconstruction to be given to US AID, which is under the State Department. One congressional committee has already taken steps to ensure that that happens. But they will have to be bold and fast to out-maneuver Rumsfeld, who seems to fancy himself the Clive of Iraq.




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*US troops have entered the southern reaches of the Shiite holy city of Najaf and are receiving a relatively warm reception from the 560,000 largely Shiite locals. They have been engaged in a fierce battle with Republican Guards for the city, which is on a key strategic route linking the south of Iraq with Baghdad. It is revered by approximately 100 million Shiites throughout the world, including neighboring Iran, as the site of the golden-domed tomb of Imam `Ali, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, who for Shiites is the St. Peter of Islam--the successor to the Prophet. (See my article at the History News Network, below or by googling it). Rick Atkinson of the Washington Post reported that Col. Ben Hodges said, ' "We've hit them very hard the last two days, wherever they're firing at us, from homes, from schools. But the one place I've absolutely told them they cannot fire is into the mosque" at the Ali tomb, Hodges said. "I believe they were shocked that we would shoot that close and hit that hard. But look, the gold dome is still standing." ' Give than man a medal. If the tomb had been hit, it had the potential for stirring up enormous anti-American feeling in Iran, Lebanon, Bahrain, etc. Scheherezade Faramarzi reported such concerns in Iran for AP. Her interviewees there thought that there would be enormous anger in Iran, especially in traditionalist places like Qom and Mashhad (the latter has its own shrine), if Ali's tomb were damaged.

US officers said they thought Najaf was now "contained." That locals would be glad to see the Americans is plausible. Najaf rose up against Saddam in spring of 1991 and threw off Baath rule briefly. But then the Baathists came in with tanks and helicopter gunships and put them down brutally. My Iraqi Shiite friends speak of 40,000 dead in Najaf alone, nearly 10% of the population, and although that may be an exaggeration, the number killed was in any case monstrous. Likewise, about 100 Shiite clergymen were killed or made to disappear. The Grand Ayatollah in Najaf, Ali Sistani, was subject to an assassination attempt by the Baath in 1996 and since then has been cautious. He was forced to issue a fatwa last September forbidding cooperation with the Americans, but everyone thinks it was coerced. US officers say the Najaf clergymen are still on the fence. If they come over to the US, that will be a very important cultural and political victory.

*A major push on the other Shiite shrine city, Karbala, has now begun. Damaging its shrines or causing substantial casualties among its civilian population would hold the same dangers for the US as had Najaf. In other news, the British say they have taken the western third of Basra, Iraq's second largest city.

*AP says about 100 Iraqis from a tribal background are now fighting alongside the Anglo-American forces. That's a development the US should seek to expand. The problem with the war so far is that it isn't creating *Iraqi* heroes, outside Kurdistan. But such heroes, forged in the war against the Baath, would potentially be very important in running the country after the war.

*Asharq al-Awsat says 50,000 marched against the war in Alexandria, Egypt's second-largest city, and that some were demanding that the door be opened to holy war against the United States. The scary thing is that the biggest recent anti-war demonstration, on Sunday, was in Jakarta, Indonesia. Egyptians don't have a democracy and are stuck with the quasi-military Mubarak government. But if unrest continues to brew over this issue in Indonesia, an anti-American government could come to power in Indonesia eventually, and Islamists could become powerful. They aren't, now, and Indonesia's experiment in open society has certainly been damaged by the US war in Iraq. People like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz think they can have their cake [war in Iraq, support for Sharon in Israel] and eat it too [spread of liberalism and democracy in the Muslim world]. But it is possible that these two goals are incompatible with one another. Isaiah Berlin warned us about incompatible ideals. The chickenhawks in Washington are imbued with a utopianism (at least in their rhetoric) of which he would have disapproved.



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