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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: US backing the wrong Shi'ite horse For some time, analysts have suggested that the George W Bush administration's "troop surge" strategy may have achieved a measure of success in certain parts of Iraq. Many highlight the tendency on the part of local tribes in the Sunni-dominated areas to stand up against al-Qaeda, in that way emphasizing their own "Iraqiness" as well as their unwillingness to join in an all-out war against Western civilization. Attacks against US forces have declined in many of these areas, and there are signs that al-Qaeda has been forced to relocate to new areas and to choose new targets. Perhaps the most convincing indicator of some "surge" success has also gone largely unnoticed. Reports from Baghdad suggest that the Sunni politicians who have been participating in government and Parliament are now becoming increasingly nervous about internal Sunni competition from the newly emerging anti-jihadi tribal leaders of their "own" community - for example in such places as the Anbar governorate. In terms of Iraqi nation-building, this is a healthy sign. There was always some doubt as to whether the Sunni parties who "won" the heavily boycotted 2005 parliamentary elections were truly representative. The fact that they are now worried about internal competition means that more Sunnis are interested in participating in the system. And these are Sunnis whom the "surge" may have assisted and who are firmly attached to the vision of a unified Iraq and enjoying the support of their core constituencies. At the same time, foreign-sponsored groups, such as al-Qaeda, and office seekers whose popular legitimacy is in doubt are coming under pressure or even being weeded out. South of Baghdad, the logical corollary to this kind of "surge" policy would have been to build local alliances with the Shi'ite groups with a historical record of firmly opposing Iran and its interference in Iraq. The principal aim would be to create a counterbalance against the extreme pro-Iranian factions inside, such as the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and its Badr Brigades - organizations that since 2003 have obtained a disproportionate degree of formal political power in the Iraqi political system and are using their roles in the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to consolidate their positions further. There are many groups in the south with a long record of hostility to Iran, above all the various Sadrist factions such as Fadhila and the "mainline" followers of Muqtada al-Sadr (some of whom have even served sentences in Iranian prisons). There are also independent Shi'ite tribal groups that are fiercely proud of their Arab heritage. These groups also distinguish themselves from the SIIC by maintaining that any clerical rule in Iraq should be under the principle of wilayat al-faqih (the rule of the jurisprudent) dictated by Iraqi clerics, not Iranian ones. But US policy south of Baghdad is exactly the opposite. The pro-Iranian SIIC and its friends in the Badr Organization (now powerful in the Iraqi security forces) are being supported by the United States in their efforts to bulldoze all kinds of internal Shi'ite opposition. Examples include the large-scale battle against an alleged cultist movement at Najaf in January, as well the ongoing operations against the Sadrist Mahdi Army and its splinter factions. Indiscriminate mass arrests have often accompanied these incidents, with the Maliki government's wholesale designation of its enemies as "terrorists" apparently being taken at face value by US forces, while persistent complaints from those arrested about "Iranian intrigue" are ignored. Today, apart from isolated rural enclaves, the sole remaining bastions of solid Shi'ite resistance to the SIIC outside Baghdad are in Maysan and Basra (which happen to be located outside direct US control, in the British zone in the far south). But change may be under way here, too: the SIIC has worked for more than a year to unseat the Fadhila governor of oil-rich Basra (he remained in office by early September despite an order by Maliki to have him replaced) and the Badr Brigades are reportedly influential within the security forces in Maysan. Ironically, long-standing enemies of Iran like the Fadhila party are now feeling so isolated that they see no other recourse than to upgrade contacts with their erstwhile foes in Tehran - if only tentatively. The apparent US rationale for this is the idea that the Sadrist Mahdi Army somehow constitutes their worst enemy in Iraq, and that some Mahdi Army factions are even being supplied with arms from Tehran. An alternative theory is that Iran could be deliberately feeding weaponry to marginal (or splinter) elements of the Sadrists precisely to weaken the Sadrist movement as a whole, and to make sure that Sadrist energy is used up in clashes with US forces. Right now, from Tehran's point of view, the implementation of the "surge" south of Baghdad could not have been more perfect. Today, US forces are working around the clock to weaken Tehran's traditional arch-enemies in Iraq's Shi'ite heartland - the Sadrists - while Iran's preferred and privileged partner since the 1980s, the SIIC, keeps strengthening its influence everywhere. In the US, think-tanks concentrate on the ties between Sadrists and Iran and consistently overlook those factions that have long-standing ties to Tehran. The recently released National Intelligence Estimate lacked any initiatives to bring the Shi'ites into a more reconciliatory mode - suggesting that few ideas exist in Washington about alternative Shi'ite policies. The US mainstream media are also contributing. After having demonized former premier Ibrahim al-Jaafari for alleged ties to Iran in 2005, US newspapers are now using big headlines every time there is the slightest hint of any connection between Iran and Muqtada. On top of all this, the US military is also exposed to ongoing encounters with militia splinter groups and the low-level conflict that comes with them - no doubt another factor that works to Tehran's advantage. The irony of this is that, from the historical perspective, the neo-conservative assumption that Iraqi Shi'ites can be trusted to resist Iranian domination is generally sound - with the sole exception of the particular faction that Washington is fixated on as its special partner. In the 1980s, the erstwhile SIIC was designed by Iran to maximize Tehran's control of the unruly Iraqi opposition. Throughout its history, it has stressed the importance of subservience to Iran's leaders, first ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and later Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the mid-1990s, its leader Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim became one of the first Shi'ite intellectuals to produce an elaborate plan for the political unification of the Shi'ites from Iran to Lebanon in a federal system under the leadership of Tehran, and as late as 1999 one of the SIIC's key figures, Sadr al-Din al-Qubbanji, angrily attacked the Sadrists for daring to suggest that the Iraqi Shi'ite opposition could operate independently of Khamenei. Close scrutiny of the SIIC's highly publicized name change (it was formerly the the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and supposed "ideological makeover" in May shows that none of this heritage has been convincingly annulled. The new and much trumpeted "pledge" to Ali al-Sistani is in reality nothing more than a noncommittal expression of general praise, and there is no renunciation of a decades-long policy of subordination to Khamenei. It is suspicious that the SIIC and Iran still hold virtually synchronized views on the sacrosanctity of the Maliki government and the 2005 constitution. Both tend to describe the idea of challenging Maliki as "subversive coup activity" and they are unified in rejecting challenges to the constitution by what they describe as "neo-Ba'athists". The problem is that Washington's "surge" is framed as a straightforward counterinsurgency operation, with the nation-building component in the distant background. "The enemy" is defined on the basis of a myopic interpretation of who is directly hostile to US forces, while the historical dimensions of the alliances between Iran and Iraqi Shi'ite factions are overlooked. This prevents Washington from fully understanding who is friend and who is foe in Iraq. It is conceivable that the SIIC may assist Washington in temporarily reducing the amount of noise out of Iraq, and this may well be what the Bush administration is looking for right now. Yet even if its members are more genteel and well-behaved than the Sadrists, it is highly unclear what kind of "moderation" the SIIC is really capable of delivering in Iraq, especially in terms of a political system based on true reconciliation between Shi'ites and Sunnis. For that to be brought about, many Iraqis, regardless of sectarian affiliation, will require unequivocal answers from the SIIC on certain key questions: Does its leadership still believe in the principle of the rule of the jurisprudent (wilayat al-faqih) and the idea of a supreme Shi'ite leader (wali amr al-muslimin), and if so, whom do they consider to be the current holder of this leadership role? Are they prepared to reject, squarely and explicitly, any possible role for Iran's Khamenei in shaping their policies? Can they offer reassurances to the Iraqi people that the Iran-dominated pan-Shi'ite federation scheme laid out by Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim in the 1990s is now null and void? After all, the futility of an approach based on vague ideas about "moderate, pro-US personalities" and private assurances to US officials ("Iraq will never become a carbon copy of Iran") is particularly pronounced in the strictly hierarchical Shi'ite context. All orthodox Shi'ites who are not themselves qualified theologians (mujtahids) will have to defer to the higher clergy on important issues. None of the Shi'ite operators in Iraq with whom Washington has been dealing is a recognized mujtahid. Clarification of these issues would help the SIIC enormously and could assist the party in finding a more constructive role as a primary mainstream, truly "moderate" player in Iraqi politics. But until public answers from the SIIC are forthcoming (rather than in hazy name changes and in private meetings with US special envoys), many Iraqis will remain ambivalent about the organization's ties to Iran. In that situation, the "surge" will be doomed unless it can be redefined to include a credible nation-building component aimed at areas south of Baghdad: the Iraqi nationalist Shi'ites will remain on the margins, and the alliance of the SIIC and the two Kurdish parties will feel that they can safely continue to ignore the Sunnis, secularists and independent Shi'ites and their calls for a more substantial constitutional revision (and true national reconciliation). Even the main Sadrist parties, which have invested considerable energy in presenting themselves as "made in Iraq" and ridiculing the SIIC for its ties to Iran, could end up as ironic Iranian clients unless Washington starts dealing with them more constructively. Still, if the US is willing to rethink some of its fundamental assumptions about Iraqi politics, several options remain. Washington could, for instance, take a more open-minded approach to the ongoing efforts to create a more broadly based coalition opposing the Maliki government - such as the latest efforts by Jaafari and former premier Iyad Allawi to engineer cross-sectarian coalitions, and in the recent decision by the Iraqi Parliament's Legal Committee to condemn Maliki's decision to sack the Basra governor. In theory, these kinds of alliances could be capable of compromising on issues where consensus has eluded the Maliki government (such as the oil law and federalism). And the US should refrain from backroom machinations (which would only taint any alternative government) and focus on recalibrating its policies - including the "surge". This could ensure that the the new participation of the Sunni community within the system is accompanied by parallel positive developments among the Iraqi Shi'ites. That in itself could be enough to help the Da'wa Party move back to its Iraqi-nationalist ideals, and thereby nudge the Maliki government into a more conciliatory mode. Conversely, if Washington continues to conceive of "the Iranian threat" in Iraq as exclusively a matter of security in the most palpable sense - meaning "Sadrist terrorists" - then Tehran and its SIIC allies seem set for easy sailing in Iraq. Reidar Visser is a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and editor of the Iraq website http://Historiae.org. His books include Basra, the Failed Gulf State: Separatism and Nationalism in Southern Iraq (2005) and, edited with Gareth Stansfield, An Iraq of Its Regions: Cornerstones of a Federal Democracy? (2007).
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