Informed Comment

*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.

*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.

*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.

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.

*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.