Can the Shiite Center Hold?: The unanticipated consequences of “Iraqification.” (REUEL MARC GERECHT, April 3, 2006, Opinion Journal)
The Shiites of Iraq who want representative government, and who look to the resolutely moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani for religious and political guidance, have endured Baathists, Sunni supremacists and holy warriors. They have seen the shrine of Samarra–the most purely Shiite shrine in the country, which has been for ages the responsibility of Sunnis to protect–horribly scarred. If the Shiite center collapses–if radicals like Muqtada al Sadr and some within the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) and the Dawa Party can depict themselves as more effective guardians of the faithful–then massive internecine violence, Kurdish secession and a Shiite dictatorship seem likely.
Contrary to what so many in the Bush administration hoped, Iraq’s salvation still rides with the two forces that few had foreseen: the religious Shiites, who recognize Ayatollah Sistani as moral guide, not the secularists in whom U.S. officials placed such store; and the U.S. military, which remains the only effective counterinsurgency force capable of diminishing sectarian strife and staunching Sunni-led violence. Together, they can corner the militants in their midst; if either falters, Iraq will probably descend into hell. [...]
On the Shiite side–and the Shiites will either make or break the Iraqi democratic experiment–no party, not even the firebrand Muqtada al Sadr, has advanced a nondemocratic political ideal. Though one can certainly find Iraqi Shiites who admire an Iranian-style theocracy, they have been philosophically crippled in their own country since no prominent Iraqi cleric has come forward to challenge Ayatollah Sistani and the other senior ulema, who have rejected clerical rule in favor of democracy. Though Washington and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad are awash with those who fear the nefarious hand of Tehran in Iraq–and Iran’s clerical elite and their fervid praetorians, like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, certainly intend us great harm–Tehran has relatively few loud political defenders among the Arabs of Mesopotamia. Prominent Shiite Iraqi exiles who’ve become political players in Baghdad do owe Iran their lives–Tehran saved thousands from certain death under Saddam–and many more are now surely benefiting from the Iran’s clandestine largesse. Regions of southern Iraq appear to be increasingly under the sway of Tehran. Iran will try to prevent the birth of functioning democracy backed by senior Iraqi clerics who don’t recognize the legitimacy of theocracy.
Yet no Iraqi Shiite can expect to have a political future–indeed, expect to stay alive–with the rallying cry of “Shiites Unite! Join the Persians!” Saddam Hussein was not the only thing driving Iraqi Shiites to kill Iranian Shiites in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Iraqi nationalism and an organic, nonideological Arabism is alive among them and will provide stiff resistance to any Iranian effort to direct its Shiite “allies” in Iraq. Hence, in part, Muqtada al Sadr’s criticism of Sciri’s recent efforts to facilitate U.S.-Iranian talks about Iraq. Sadr and his men, who often deride Ayatollah Sistani’s Iranian birth, can be ferocious Arab Iraqi nationalists and diehard Islamic militants. That the Bush administration would welcome Sciri-backed Iranian-U.S. talks in Baghdad is bizarre: We should want to underscore and oppose all of Sciri’s Iranian flirtations.
We can certainly expect to see Iraqi Shiites cut short-term deals with Iran–the crushing poverty in many Shiite regions of Iraq will guarantee the cash-laden Iranians influence. But it is fear of the Sunni insurgency and holy warriors that gives Iran real traction in Iraqi society. If the insurgency abates, the Iraqi army becomes more powerful, or Iraqi Shiite militias become bolder (and they certainly appear to be more effective in striking Sunnis even in well-armed, solidly Sunni neighborhoods), Iran’s influence will wane. Though definitely weakened by the constant savage Sunni attacks against the Shiites, which make Shiite clerics counseling forbearance look somewhat unworldly, Ayatollah Sistani still holds sufficient sway to guarantee that negotiations among the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds continue. Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of Sciri, the dominant Shiite political party, is well aware that if Ayatollah Sistani were publicly to signal dismay with his actions, his political power would shrink considerably, probably even jeopardizing Sciri’s existence. It is Sciri’s clerical connections–the Hakim family is among the most prominent, and in the holy city of Najaf, among the most moderate, of Iraq’s influential clerical families–that give it real strength.
Washington currently has no Shiite “partner” in Iraq.
Other than Ayatollah Sistani, who, as he’s just explained, is the only person who matters.
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