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Ayatollah's Death Deepens U.S. Woes
Spiritual and Political Figure Backed Transition Effort
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 30, 2003; Page A01
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 29 -- The death of Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, a rare cleric with political acumen and religious pedigree, may pose the greatest challenge yet to U.S. efforts to court Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority and bring stability to Iraq.
Hakim, 64, a member of one of Iraq's most prominent clerical families, headed the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), an opposition group he founded in 1982 while exiled in Iran.
Though his ties to the Islamic government in Iran long made him suspect in the eyes of U.S. officials, his decision to enroll his movement in the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and, by default, act as a proponent of U.S. efforts here, counted as one of the true achievements of American diplomacy in postwar Iraq.
His death in today's car bombing at the Imam Ali shrine removes his credibility and prestige from SCIRI, which is already locked in a growing rivalry with younger, more militant clerics seeking to give voice to Iraqis' growing frustration with the occupation.
Without him, U.S. officials lose perhaps their most important interlocutor with the Shiite community at a time the Americans acknowledge is, at best, delicate.
"There's no political replacement for him," Sheik Hamid Ali Jaff, a 33-year-old cleric, said as he wandered through the devastation left by the attack. "We'll have to wait many years for another replacement."
U.S. officials have acknowledged the key role that Shiites will play in any postwar arrangement.
Shiites suffered some of the worst brutality meted out by President Saddam Hussein, with tens of thousands executed and exiled in a repression that was especially pronounced after their failed uprising after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. In contrast to Sunni Muslims, the community that provided Hussein much of his support, Shiites jubilantly welcomed his fall, even as some remained suspicious of U.S. intentions.
In the crucial battles ahead over a new constitution and a postwar government, their support is essential, and U.S. officials have described the prospect of turmoil and infighting within Shiite ranks as a nightmare scenario.
As evidenced by the outpouring of sentiment in Najaf, Baghdad and other cities, Hakim's death will, in the short run, probably conceal divisions among Shiite factions.
In a statement tonight, Moqtada Sadr, his chief rival and a virulent opponent of the occupation, called for a three-day strike to protest Hakim's death and a week of mourning to mark his passing. In Sadr City, a sprawling Baghdad neighborhood where Hakim's support was limited, thousands poured into the streets to demonstrate their sympathy.
"Saddam is the enemy of God," they shouted.
But in the long term, those divisions seem likely to be exacerbated, given tension already evident in recent months in politics that, even to insiders, remain Byzantine and are marked by shifting allegiances.
In the days after Hussein's fall, an angry mob murdered Abdel-Majid Khoei, a well-known cleric who was flown into Najaf by the United States from exile in London. In the West, he was seen as moderate, and his stated mission was to unify Shiite ranks.
Hakim, too, had emerged as a flexible figure. In 23 years of exile, he advocated an Islamic state, reflecting the position of the Iranian government that sheltered him and sanctioned the creation of his military wing, known as the Badr Brigades.
On his return in May, his public statements softened. He still criticized the occupation, but he spoke less of an Islamic state. In his Friday sermons at the Imam Ali shrine, his message focused more on Islamic unity and less on the shortcomings of the U.S.-led administration.
His replacement will likely be his brother, Abdel-Aziz Hakim, who already holds a seat on the 25-member Governing Council. Abdel-Aziz Hakim headed the Badr Brigades but lacked his brother's connections with more senior clergy and his reputation as an opponent of Hussein.
In the political arena, that leaves Sadr with perhaps the greatest popular voice. A son of another prominent cleric, Sadr, 30, has used his sermons at the mosque in Kufa, just a few miles from Najaf, to deliver a message of empowerment for the Shiite poor and disenfranchised, and his street support overshadowed Hakim's.
As a rallying cry, he has denounced the U.S. occupation and proclaimed the formation of the Mahdi Army, so far an unarmed group that seems more akin to a morals police force than a militia.
While both Hakim and Sadr were overshadowed in spiritual matters by Iraq's most senior clerics, men like Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, those clerics have eschewed a political role, deeming it beneath their spiritual calling.
They have tacitly supported U.S. efforts, mainly by remaining silent, but would be loath to play a more assertive role. Despite U.S. pressure, they have resisted taking a more aggressive line against Sadr, fearful of the strife such a confrontation might unleash.
Despite Sadr's denials, many in Najaf blamed him for Khoei's killing and for an assassination attempt last week on another grand ayatollah, Mohammed Saeed Hakim, the slain cleric's uncle. He escaped with only scratches to his neck.
But in the streets around the shrine, where charred carcasses of cars lay in pools mixed with blackened debris and blood, many insisted that only loyalists of Hussein could carry out such carnage. No Shiite, they said, would intentionally damage the gold-domed shrine of Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad and the man Shiites consider his heir.
If the car bomb was planted by Hussein loyalists, it shows a telling recognition of the weaknesses of the U.S. occupation, which to many here seems increasingly isolated.
The bombing of the Jordanian Embassy on Aug. 7 sent a chill through Arab capitals still debating whether to engage the Governing Council, which is struggling for credibility among its own people.
The devastation of the U.N. headquarters drove the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and some humanitarian groups out of the country. Judging by the reaction in the streets of Najaf tonight, few believe the consequences of today's carnage will be any less far-reaching.
The attacks come at a time that U.S. officials are struggling on multiple fronts in their efforts to bring order to a country beset by crime, anger and frustration.
A simmering guerrilla war against U.S. forces in Sunni Muslim areas -- marked by increasingly sophisticated attacks -- shows little sign of abating. Last week, ethnic strife flared in northern Iraq between Kurds and Turkomens, a dispute that U.S. forces seemed ill-prepared to resolve. While still sporadic, attacks have increased against British troops patrolling southern Iraq, a Shiite-dominated region that until recent weeks was notable for its calm but which has grown restive because of a continued lack of basic services.
In the latest incident there, a bomb was set off today near the British base in Basra. There were no casualties.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2291-2003Aug29.html
Spiritual and Political Figure Backed Transition Effort
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 30, 2003; Page A01
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 29 -- The death of Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, a rare cleric with political acumen and religious pedigree, may pose the greatest challenge yet to U.S. efforts to court Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority and bring stability to Iraq.
Hakim, 64, a member of one of Iraq's most prominent clerical families, headed the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), an opposition group he founded in 1982 while exiled in Iran.
Though his ties to the Islamic government in Iran long made him suspect in the eyes of U.S. officials, his decision to enroll his movement in the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and, by default, act as a proponent of U.S. efforts here, counted as one of the true achievements of American diplomacy in postwar Iraq.
His death in today's car bombing at the Imam Ali shrine removes his credibility and prestige from SCIRI, which is already locked in a growing rivalry with younger, more militant clerics seeking to give voice to Iraqis' growing frustration with the occupation.
Without him, U.S. officials lose perhaps their most important interlocutor with the Shiite community at a time the Americans acknowledge is, at best, delicate.
"There's no political replacement for him," Sheik Hamid Ali Jaff, a 33-year-old cleric, said as he wandered through the devastation left by the attack. "We'll have to wait many years for another replacement."
U.S. officials have acknowledged the key role that Shiites will play in any postwar arrangement.
Shiites suffered some of the worst brutality meted out by President Saddam Hussein, with tens of thousands executed and exiled in a repression that was especially pronounced after their failed uprising after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. In contrast to Sunni Muslims, the community that provided Hussein much of his support, Shiites jubilantly welcomed his fall, even as some remained suspicious of U.S. intentions.
In the crucial battles ahead over a new constitution and a postwar government, their support is essential, and U.S. officials have described the prospect of turmoil and infighting within Shiite ranks as a nightmare scenario.
As evidenced by the outpouring of sentiment in Najaf, Baghdad and other cities, Hakim's death will, in the short run, probably conceal divisions among Shiite factions.
In a statement tonight, Moqtada Sadr, his chief rival and a virulent opponent of the occupation, called for a three-day strike to protest Hakim's death and a week of mourning to mark his passing. In Sadr City, a sprawling Baghdad neighborhood where Hakim's support was limited, thousands poured into the streets to demonstrate their sympathy.
"Saddam is the enemy of God," they shouted.
But in the long term, those divisions seem likely to be exacerbated, given tension already evident in recent months in politics that, even to insiders, remain Byzantine and are marked by shifting allegiances.
In the days after Hussein's fall, an angry mob murdered Abdel-Majid Khoei, a well-known cleric who was flown into Najaf by the United States from exile in London. In the West, he was seen as moderate, and his stated mission was to unify Shiite ranks.
Hakim, too, had emerged as a flexible figure. In 23 years of exile, he advocated an Islamic state, reflecting the position of the Iranian government that sheltered him and sanctioned the creation of his military wing, known as the Badr Brigades.
On his return in May, his public statements softened. He still criticized the occupation, but he spoke less of an Islamic state. In his Friday sermons at the Imam Ali shrine, his message focused more on Islamic unity and less on the shortcomings of the U.S.-led administration.
His replacement will likely be his brother, Abdel-Aziz Hakim, who already holds a seat on the 25-member Governing Council. Abdel-Aziz Hakim headed the Badr Brigades but lacked his brother's connections with more senior clergy and his reputation as an opponent of Hussein.
In the political arena, that leaves Sadr with perhaps the greatest popular voice. A son of another prominent cleric, Sadr, 30, has used his sermons at the mosque in Kufa, just a few miles from Najaf, to deliver a message of empowerment for the Shiite poor and disenfranchised, and his street support overshadowed Hakim's.
As a rallying cry, he has denounced the U.S. occupation and proclaimed the formation of the Mahdi Army, so far an unarmed group that seems more akin to a morals police force than a militia.
While both Hakim and Sadr were overshadowed in spiritual matters by Iraq's most senior clerics, men like Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, those clerics have eschewed a political role, deeming it beneath their spiritual calling.
They have tacitly supported U.S. efforts, mainly by remaining silent, but would be loath to play a more assertive role. Despite U.S. pressure, they have resisted taking a more aggressive line against Sadr, fearful of the strife such a confrontation might unleash.
Despite Sadr's denials, many in Najaf blamed him for Khoei's killing and for an assassination attempt last week on another grand ayatollah, Mohammed Saeed Hakim, the slain cleric's uncle. He escaped with only scratches to his neck.
But in the streets around the shrine, where charred carcasses of cars lay in pools mixed with blackened debris and blood, many insisted that only loyalists of Hussein could carry out such carnage. No Shiite, they said, would intentionally damage the gold-domed shrine of Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad and the man Shiites consider his heir.
If the car bomb was planted by Hussein loyalists, it shows a telling recognition of the weaknesses of the U.S. occupation, which to many here seems increasingly isolated.
The bombing of the Jordanian Embassy on Aug. 7 sent a chill through Arab capitals still debating whether to engage the Governing Council, which is struggling for credibility among its own people.
The devastation of the U.N. headquarters drove the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and some humanitarian groups out of the country. Judging by the reaction in the streets of Najaf tonight, few believe the consequences of today's carnage will be any less far-reaching.
The attacks come at a time that U.S. officials are struggling on multiple fronts in their efforts to bring order to a country beset by crime, anger and frustration.
A simmering guerrilla war against U.S. forces in Sunni Muslim areas -- marked by increasingly sophisticated attacks -- shows little sign of abating. Last week, ethnic strife flared in northern Iraq between Kurds and Turkomens, a dispute that U.S. forces seemed ill-prepared to resolve. While still sporadic, attacks have increased against British troops patrolling southern Iraq, a Shiite-dominated region that until recent weeks was notable for its calm but which has grown restive because of a continued lack of basic services.
In the latest incident there, a bomb was set off today near the British base in Basra. There were no casualties.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2291-2003Aug29.html
