Informed Comment

*Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Husain Fadlallah of Lebanon has complained about Muslims engaging in violence, saying that they are aping Marxists in so doing rather than sticking to Islamic principles. Daily Star quotes him as calling on the “educated elite to lead the way in safeguarding Islam’s intellectual heritage in the most dangerous period for the Islamic world,” adding that “we should plan to achieve an end that aspires to Muslims and the teachings of Islam and not to Western and other foreign ideals, even if takes us 50 years.” He urged adherence to the “wise” and “moderate” teachings of the Koran. Fadlallah is said to have special influence with the Iraqi al-Da`wa Party.

*Shiite prayer leader Kadhim al-`Ibadi in East Baghdad said in his Friday sermon that the sole beneficiaries of the UN Security Council decision to lift sanctions on Iraq were the US and Britain. He also said he protested in the strongest possible terms the recent announcement by ORHA head Paul Bremer that the formation of an Iraqi transitional government had been postponed, terming this an “extension of American rule.” His al-Muhsin Mosque is attended by thousands.

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*Belgium has begun the trial of 23 suspects it alleges have links to al-Qaeda. They belong to an obscure group that may have been involved in the bombings in Casablanca a few days ago. They include a former Tunisian football (soccer) star who admits knowing and admiring Bin Laden. Nizar ben Abdelaziz Trabelsi is accused with others of plotting an attack on the Kleine Brogel Air force base, which some allege contains US nuclear weapons. I don’t know what exactly they were planning to do there, but “al-Qaeda” and “nuclear weapons” in the same sentence makes me nervous. Note that a similar trial in Holland last year ended without the state being able to secure a verdict, because the evidence was deemed circumstantial. I hope this prosecutor team has more on the ball.

*A US armored vehicle in the Sunni town of Falluja came under fire from a rocked propelled grenade late on Weds. That prompted US troops to fire back. Local residents, who are extremely hostile to the US, accused the troops of firing indiscriminately toward the center of town. Also, as the US troops tell it, a Nissan slammed into a Bradley fighting vehicle, causing the troops to fire into the Nissan and kill two Iraqis. The Falluja residents maintain that the two young men in the Nissan were just innocent victims of indiscriminate US gunfire. One knowledgeable scholar recently said in my hearing that we are lucky Falluja is Sunni and not Shiite–if this sort of thing happened in Najaf or Karbala, it would have big repercussions. From what I have seen in the press, Falluja residents may be Sunni Islamists. The danger is that the sort of radical anti-American attitudes (no one denies the rpg attack on the US started the whole thing) might spread to the Sunnis of Baghdad if the US doesn’t soon provide security and services there.

*Hamid Karzai has been trying to reign in the provincial warlords who actually rule most of Afghanistan. He has gotten them to pledge, at least, to forward tax monies to the center rather than hoarding them for themselves. And, he has demoted powerful warlord Rashid Dostum from his military position in Mazar-i Sharif, making him a civilian consultant. The problem with such pledges and changes in title is that power in Afghanistan is personalistic and fluid. Basically, on this one I am from Missouri, not Qandahar. Show me. Karzai still lacks much of a military force or financial leverage, and these sorts of announcements strike me as more cosmetic than anything else.

Emergence of a Shiite Bloc? (My comment on Gulf2000 replying to

William Beeman’s op-ed).

*I do not think “Twelver Shiism” is the proper unit of analysis in the

current situation. [DW] is of course correct that the religion has

common themes and sentiments (including martyrdom and a keen sense of

righteous indignation on behalf of the victim), though their relative

weight changes over time, as Nikki Keddie points out. Twelver Shiite

religious institutions do create transnational linkages, and the

emancipation of the Iraqi Shiites may reinvigorate these. But the

prospect of political alliances seems to me rather on a party to party and

state to state basis. It is in this regard that the early twenty-first

century differs so significantly from previous moments of transnational

Shiite networking. Modern party and state institutions controlled by

religious Shiites are now a possible vehicle for alliances. It is not

just a matter of Sistani and of Khamenei, or Muqtada al-Sadr versus

Muhammad Husain Fadlullah.

Thus, in his recent trip to Beirut, President Khatami appears to me to

have been far more supportive of Hizbullah and of a continued rejectionist

stance toward Israel than in the past (I am not really speaking of his

privately held views, but of how much he was willing to get out in front

on these issues). Hizbullah is a Lebanese political party, which

represents only some of the Lebanese Shiites (Amal, which controls the

office of speaker of the House in the Lebanese parliament, is arguably

more important). Khatami is probably closer ideologically to AMAL leader

Nabih Berri than he is to Shaikh Nasrallah of Hizbullah. My

interpretation would be that US pressure on Hizbullah and on Iran after

the Gulf War has caused even a reformist like Khatami to want to draw the

Shiite wagons around for mutual defense from the hyperpower. It strikes

me that the hardliners in Iran are nevertheless likely to remain the prime

sponsors of Hizbullah.

The Iranians are said to have made a similar play for a patron-client

relationship with the Afghan Shiite party, Hizb-i Vahdat, but were turned

down by Hizb leader Karim Khalili, on the grounds that he felt a duty to

be an Afghan first. Whether the Iranians can get the Vahdat to reconsider

(and it is always possible that they will break with the Tajiks with whom

they are currently allied) is up in the air. But I would say that, at

least on a state-to-party basis, that element in the [alleged] . . . Shiite bloc is

weak.

Likewise, Shiites in Pakistan and India are mostly oriented to local

zakirs or clerical chanters at mourning ceremonies. They have a complex

view of religious leadership, and while many among the literate may

emulate Sistani, not all approve of his political quietism, admiring

Khamenei on that score.

I agree . . . that Shiite leaders in Iraq may benefit from

being able, as a collectivity, to appeal both to the very poor and to the

more respectable. But ultimately (two years down the road) their

authority in Iraq will depend on the effective deployment of political

parties that can contest elections and make compromises and get things

done within an Iraqi framework. There may be points at which Iraqi party

alliances with political actors in Iran prove advantageous, but I suspect

it will be on an ad hoc basis rather than as a matter of belonging to a

transnational bloc.

The more radical religious leaders in Iraq hope to establish first a

tyranny of the Shiite majority in Iraq, and then to capture that majority

with a theocratic leadership. This plan seems to me unrealistic, but it

could cause a lot of trouble. My guess with regard to Iran is that

Khamenei would support it and the reformists won’t.

Note that reformists in Iran are already openly reminding the hardliners

of what happened to the Taliban and Saddam, and are calling for freedom of

the press and speech. I doubt they have any sympathy for Muqtada al-Sadr.

So, I would suggest that new transnational networks are likely to emerge,

but that these are likely to be multiple and to contest loyalties among

one another, and so would avoid the term ‘bloc.’

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*Daniel Pipes, who has thrown around accusations that academics critical of American nationalism or Likud aggression are “pro-terrorist,” has now openly come out in favor of supporting the Mujahidin-i Khalq terrorist organization that had been based in Saddam’s Iraq and supported by the Baath. This group was among those that took US embassy personnel hostage, and blew up 81 high Iranian officials in the early 1980s. Pipes and his co-author argue that the MK has been functioning as an “army” on Iraqi soil, aiming its operations at the Iranian regime. Pipes has again revealed his true colors. This is Bush’s nominee to the US Institute for Peace?

*Lord Goldsmith, the British attorney general, told UK PM Tony Blair that the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq and reconstruction efforts may be illegal in international law without a further UN Security Council resolution authorizing those efforts. The memo, from some time ago, has just been leaked. His concerns derive from the language of the 4th Geneva Convention, which govern the behavior of military occupying powers. The Guardian writes that ‘He listed specifically the limitations placed on the authority of an occupying power under international law. These included attempts at “wide-ranging reforms of governmental and administrative structures”, any alterations in the status of public officials or judges except in exceptional cases, changes to the penal laws, and the imposition of major structural economic reforms.’

*Some of Lord Goldsmith’s concerns may be allayed by the announcement by the Bremer team that no Iraqi transitional government is likely to emerge until at least July. There were demonstrations by Shiites on Monday against such delays in moving to an Iraqi national authority of some sort. Others of his concerns may actually be addressed by the UN Security Council, which seems to be looking with favor on a resolution ending sanctions on Iraq and implicitly recognizing the changed status quo.

*British troops will be replacing US Army forces in Baghdad, in hopes they will do a better job at policing, something US troops have not been trained for. The British have generally done a better job of restoring order to Basra than the Americans have done in the capital. One British officer was quoted in the Mirror saying: “”We have three months at best to get this right. It is absolutely crucial the people of Baghdad can be persuaded we are there to help them. Otherwise, the whole point of the operation could totally collapse and we could have a new war on our hands against the Iraqi people we came to liberate. The American troops in Baghdad are not doing what is necessary. They are tired, they want to go home and they do not have the training for the job that needs to be done. After 30 years of being in Northern Ireland, as well as the Balkans, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, we know we have those skills and have offered our help.”

*Meanwhile, the coalition forces say they are going to begin collecting machine guns from the Iraqi populace. I fear some of the militiamen carrying them may not give them up without a fight, and that a fight in a Baghdad slum may be hard to win politically.

*In Pakistan, Qazi Husain Ahmad, head of the fundamentalist Jamaat-i Islami, has insisted that Gen. Pervez Musharraf retire from the military and become a civilian president by August 15, or face a nationwide campaign of popular protests against his rule. The Commonwealth recently rejected Pakistan’s application to rejoin on the grounds that Pakistan’s parliament still lacks full sovereignty and can by over-ruled by Gen. Musharraf. The religious parties in parliament, with nearly 20 percent of seats, have been instrumental in paralyzing its workings because they refuse to turn to legislation until 19 martial law amendments passed by diktat by Musharraf last summer are repealed. Ironically, the fundamentalists, who used to reject democracy as a Western fallacy, have emerged as the most stalwart defenders of the 1973 constitution, which pre-dates the martial law amendments of Gen. Zia ul-Haq and of Gen. Musharraf. This development supports the arguments of those who say the fundamentalists can be drawn into democratic horse trading if they are not excluded from politics by authoritarian regimes.

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*The US appears to be softening its stance toward UN participation in the rebuilding of Iraq, in return for a UN Security Council resolution that ends sanctions on Iraq and phases out the oil for food program in 6 months. The UN Secretary General will have a representative in the country, not just a coordinator. The US has especially appealed to Pakistan for help in passing the resolution. In the meantime, billionaire philanthropist George Soros is setting up a “watchdog group to guard against any abuses in how the United States manages Iraq’s oil resources while it occupies Baghdad.” (-Reuters). He noted that people around the world are suspicious of the way rebuilding contracts have been awarded with no bidding to US firms (see below).

*Shiite militiamen have been conducting vigilante raids on distilleries and liquor shops, attempting to close them down and impose prohibition by force (Reuters). The attacks have caused the value of stocks of liquor to plummet, since few want to risk distributing and selling it. This issue may seem trivial, but it could be explosive. It should be remembered that relations began to go bad between the Baath government and the Shiites in the 1970s, when the Baath authorized the sale of liquor in Najaf and Karbala, Shiite holy cities.

*Grand Ayatollahs Ali Sistani and Muhammad Sa`id al-Hakim gave two-hour audiences in their offices in Najaf yesterday to hundreds of visitors to the city seeking advice on what their attitudes should be to various groups and political parties. This according to az-Zaman. The two had been in hiding since mobs of Sadrists surrounded their houses in early April and demanded they leave the city within 48 hours. They were surrounded by special armed guards during their appearances Tuesday, but that they came in public at all seems to be a sign of increased confidence in the security of Najaf. It also seems to me likely that they feel that the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr are now less likely to be able to move against them violently. The Sadrists see Sistani and Sa`id al-Hakim as having capitulated to Saddam by keeping quiet politically in the past few years, and they deeply resent that these two survived while their hero, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, was killed in 1999 by the Baathists.

*Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, deputy leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, affirmed that his organization continues to believe in the desirability of announcing an elected transitional government, in addition to a transitional national council that would guarantee the outlining of a new political map with clear signposts. This plan, he says in an interview with az-Zaman, was agreed upon in London and again at Salahuddin. With regard to the allusion [of the Bremer administration in Iraq] to the need for a “temporary” rather than a “transitional” government, al-Hakim said that the council calls for the formation of an Iraqi government that has complete national rights, to preserve the sovereignty of Iraq and increase its active role in the Muslim and world societies. He expressed approval of the Americans’ dissolution of the Baath Party, which he said needs to be extirpated in Iraq for the sake of restoring calm to the country. He called for special national courts to try Baathists for crimes against the rights of the people and for persecution and massacres. He maintained that there are still 150 mass grave sites that have not yet been discovered, and insisted that the perpetrators be tried and brought to justice. He said the Supreme Council has a complete plan for the restoration of order and stability, which can cover 80% of Iraq, involving the establishment of neighborhood apparatuses. He says that such a set-up was implemented in Kadhimiya, Karbala, Najaf, Amara, Smawa, Basra and Kut. He pointed to the success of such local forces in providing security to pilgrims in recent visitations to Karbala and Najaf.

*Twelve businessmen representing major US corporations will be in Cairo Sunday, according to az-Zaman, to discuss with Egyptian companies what role they might play in rebuilding Iraq. The $2.4 bn. allocated to rebuilding by the US government via the US Agency for International Development must by law be awarded to US companies. But those companies can subcontract, which is where the Egyptian businesses might come in handy. (For one thing, few US businessmen, unlike the Japanese, know Arabic).

*Shaikh al-Azhar Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the chief Egyptian religious official, has condemned the bombers in Casablanca as having departed from Islam.

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*About 10,000 Shiites turned out for peaceful demonstrations in Baghdad Monday against continued US occupation of Iraq, and against the American slighting of the Shiite leadership. One organizer had predicted a million man march, so this result fell substantially short of his expectations. The US army did not interfere with the demonstrations,which was wise on its part. It appears to be the case that Iraqi Shiites are just not that upset with the US at the moment, and that the various religious parties do not have so much sway that they can mount a really impressive demonstration. Monday’s rallies would be important only if they are a harbinger of much bigger and more confrontational demonstrations down the road.

*Many Sunni Iraqis living in the Shiite South of the country have, according to Az-Zaman newspaper today, complained to the Shiite religious leadership in Najaf and Karbala about Shiite political organizations taking over Sunni mosques there. These moves come despite the fatwa issued by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani forbidding such usurpation of Sunni mosques by Shiites. (The office speaking in the name of “al-Sayyid al-Sadr” has given the same instructions.) Saddam made a point of building many new Sunni mosques in Shiite areas and letting them sermonize, whereas he forbade Shiite clergy from preaching sermons. Shiites are understandably resentful of the ways in which Sunnis remain on top economically and politically, in some case because Saddam threw key economic resources to them.

Several Sunni mosques have been usurped in an-Nasiriya and al-Samawah. The new Shiite leadership of a couple of the stolen mosques say they will return them to the Sunnis because they follow Sistani and will respect his fatwa. But other new mosque leaderships are refusing to relinquish the former Sunni mosques, saying that they belong to the al-Da`wa Party and do not consider themselves bound by Sistani’s rulings. In a way, this latter sentiment has even more potentially dire consequences for the Shiite south than does the usurpation of a few mosques.

*Lebanese Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Husain Fadlullah denounced guerrilla operations that kill innocent civilians. It now appears he was mainly referring to the bombings in Casablanca. Fadlullah says such operations are contrary to Islam.

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*Shaikh Muhammad al-Fartousi, the Friday prayers leader of the al-Hikmah Mosque in Shiite East Baghdad is one of many clergymen who have called for demonstrations against the US occupation in Baghdad and in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. Al-Fartousi say he expects a turn-out of about a million demonstrators.

This demonstration appears to come in response to the decision of ORHA head Paul Bremer to have the US administer Iraq directly rather than turning many day to day matters over to a leadership council. Bremer is now denying that there has been any change in plan, but he calls the leadership council only an “interim authority” and says it will have a purely consultative role. The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the al-Da`wa Party both have representatives on the council, initially appointed by Bremer’s predecessor, Jay Garner. The largest and by all accounts most important Shiite movement, the Sadrists, who follow Muqtada al-Sadr (al-Fartousi belongs to this group) have refused to have anything to do with the US administration.

The Shiites complain that the US is planning a long-term occupation and direct administration of their country, and that US officials have not contacted the main Shiite religious leaders. Astonishingly, this last charge appears actually to be true. US officials are lamely replying that they’ve been busy restoring security and services, and so haven’t had time to visit the main clerics in Najaf and Karbala. (They haven’t actually done a very good job of restoring security and services, and few political tasks could have been more important than reaching out to the main Shiite ayatollahs!)

Al-Fartousi is quoted as saying, “We will keep making our demands until we achieve them and, if not, we will continue peaceful rebellion and expose their glossy slogans. We don’t need a foreign man to run our country.”

Al-Fartousi and the other Sadrists really want Bremer gone on a short time schedule, and probably the Supreme Council feels the same way, now that it has again been sidelined. A spokesman for the Supreme Council, according to AFP, referred to a campaign of “civil disobedience” if the US “breaks its promises” about moving quickly to an Iraqi interim government. We’ll know by Monday evening EST how the demonstrations went. I am sure the US army won’t let itself be suckered into acting provocatively.

*The scandalous rumors spread about US troops by Shiite cleric Kadhim al-’Ibadah (Abade), prayer leader of the Imam al-Sadr Mosque of East Baghdad (congregation: 30,000) are discussed in a smart article by Warren Richie of the Christian Science Monitor. Al-’Ibadah said that US soldiers were using night vision goggles to see through Iraqi women’s clothing and were passing out candy to children with pornographic wrappers. The sermon, full of these ridiculous falsehoods, surprised the US troops, who have been trying to build a positive relationship with the Shiite leadership in Sadr City. When they complained, they were told that the sermon had not been approved by the religious establishment in Najaf, and that henceforth sermons should be submitted for approval first.

But what is almost certainly the case is that al-`Ibadah is a Sadrist, and is not obedient to Ali Sistani, the head of the Najaf establishment. He is not going to submit his sermons for approval. Sistani hasn’t appointed the East Baghdad prayer leaders. The young firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr has. The US should probably back Sistani in an attempt to get his men in control of those mosques, but this could lead to a confrontation with the militant and well-armed Sadrists. Apparently the US army is being fed the polite fiction that the prayer leaders are somehow under Sistani’s authority. This is only theoretically true. Scholastics often speak as though the theory was the reality; here, it is not.

*Al-Hayat is reporting that Moroccan officials have identified 8 of the suicide bombers who struck Casablanca. They say these 8 were all Moroccans recently returned from “foreign countries” (Belgium seems to be one such), and that they belonged to radical organizations such as “The Jihadi Salafis,” “The Straight Path” and “Excommunication and Holy Flight.” The last is actually an Egyptian fringe offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood that was implicated in both the assassination of Sadat and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Salafism is a Protestant-type reform movement that seeks to go back to the original Islamic sources and slough off medieval glosses (in fact, contemporary Salafis often fall victim to a quite modern fundamentalism that isn’t like classical Islam at all). All three groups believe it is legitimate to kill noncombatants who “opposed the implementation of the holy Law,” that is, who are not in favor of a Taliban-type Inquisitorial interpretation of the shariah or Islamic law.

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*Three of the most senior clerics in Najaf–Ali Sistani, Muhammad Sa`id al-Hakim and Bahr al-`Ulum met for the past two days. They agreed that security needed to be returned to the entire country and that salaries needed to be paid if Iraqis were to repair the steep decline in living standards that has befallen them because of the war. They also agreed on the need to form a provisional Iraqi government (something the team of Paul Bremer has now decided to put off).

The son of Bahr al-`Ulum, Hasan, said that the security situation in Najaf is relatively stable, but that he worries about the big gun trade in the city’s markets. Most families have guns, he said. But the worse problem has been the deterioration in the standard of living of Iraqis during and since the war. He said that some food shipments have arrived, though, and a shipment of medicine for the hospital also came in. – al-Zaman

Najaf is ruled by a local city council that includes tribal sheikhs and men of religion; the American-appointed mayor/police chief is a former Sunni Baath officer who turned against Saddam.

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