Category Archives: Shi’a

Update on Shi’ite clash

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BAGHDAD — Some updates on the “clashes in Najaf”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2005/08/clashes_between_badr_and_sadr.php and else­where. “Whatever80’s comments”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2005/08/clashes_between_badr_and_sadr.php#c45193 in the pre­vi­ous post match infor­ma­tion I’ve gath­ered this morn­ing.
So far: The clashes last night erupted because Moqtada’s peo­ple were demon­strat­ing at the same time and near another demon­stra­tion by res­i­dents of Najaf who were protest­ing the lack of aid in rebuild­ing their homes and city. The prin­ci­ple rea­son for the destruc­tion of Najaf was… Moq­tada al-Sadr’s insur­rec­tion last year in August. So, Najafis have no great love for the young cleric.
Words were exchanged between the two groups and the Najaf police were called in by deputy gov­er­nor Abd al-Hussein Abt­tan, a SCIRI mem­ber. The police, most of whom are Badr and who don’t par­tic­u­larly like Moq­tada either, were said to have involved them­selves in the melee and things esca­lated from there. Ear­lier reports of 20+ dead seem to be exag­ger­ated, thank­fully. Now it’s 6 – 8 peo­ple, from what I’ve heard.
The AP “reports”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050825/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq;_ylt=Ak6JTff84zO2cRoa3KmpwJOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-:

As word of the Najaf attack spread, clashes broke out between the two Shi­ite rival groups across cen­tral and south­ern Iraq. The vio­lence extended to the country’s sec­ond largest city, Basra, where sev­eral hard­line Shi­ite groups are com­pet­ing for influ­ence.
Fight­ing was reported in at least six Basra neigh­bor­hoods as al-Sadr’s fol­low­ers attacked SCIRI offices and the head­quar­ters of SCIRI’s Badr Brigade mili­tia, set­ting it ablaze, police said. Al-Sadr’s head­quar­ters in Basra was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire, accord­ing to police.
In Ama­rah, eight mor­tar shells were fired at the SCIRI office, and a dozen pro-al-Sadr offi­cials announced they were also sus­pend­ing work. Gun­men from al-Sadr’s mili­tia roamed the streets. Clashes were also reported in Kut, where a SCIRI-owned build­ing was torched, and in Nasiriyah.
On Thurs­day, rival mil­i­tant groups clashed in Diwaniya, a provin­cial cap­i­tal in south-central Iraq, using auto­matic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, police Capt. Hus­sein Hakim said. There was no imme­di­ate word on casualties.

The sit­u­a­tion across the south, how­ever, is still very tense. All of the par­ties and mili­tias are on high alert in Najaf, Nasiryah, Basra and Ama­rah. SCIRI and Badr offices in these cities are closed. Fatah al-Sheikh and his NICE coali­tion in par­lia­ment — a small block of about 20 leg­is­la­tors allied with Moq­tada —  haven’t resigned but have “sus­pended their par­tic­i­pa­tion” in par­lia­ment on the day of the vot­ing on the new con­sti­tu­tion. This will prob­a­bly have lit­tle impact on the pas­sage of the char­ter, because Sadr’s peo­ple have indi­cated they wouldn’t have voted for it any­way because of the issue of fed­er­al­ism and the belief that the issue will par­ti­tion the coun­try and hand the oil-rich south over to Iran’s prox­ies in Bagh­dad. (The al-Sadr clan has a his­tory of Iraqi nation­al­ism, and Moqtada’s father and uncle both worked to purge the _hawza_ — the Shi’ite the­o­log­i­cal sem­i­nary — in Najaf of Iran­ian influ­ence and “Ara­bize” it.)
Fatah, along with Wolf Brigade Com­man­der Abu Walid and the min­is­ter of health — a Sadr sup­porter — is cur­rently in the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf attempt­ing to “medi­ate” the sit­u­a­tion. The Wolf Brigade is an infa­mous com­mando unit attached to the min­istry of inte­rior, which is helmed by Badr loy­al­ist Bayan Jabr.
I have to cover the con­sti­tu­tion today, so I don’t know how much I’ll be able to update this, but I imag­ine the pol­i­tics of the street will intrude on the pol­i­tics of the con­sti­tu­tion today. Should be interesting.

Clashes between Badr and Sadr

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BAGHDAD — Ear­lier this evening, Najaf police units, led by a Badr Orga­ni­za­tion com­man­der, descended on Moqtada’s office in Najaf, located on the main street approach­ing the Imam Ali Shrine. In the clash, Moqtada’s office, only four meters from the shrine, was burned to the ground, accord­ing to Abu Hazzim, who worked in the Najaf office and fled for his life to Sadr City. He says 23 peo­ple have been killed, most of them Moqtada’s sup­port­ers, while media reports put the num­ber between five and eight. Iraqi Army and police have been involved in the fight­ing. Many of the police and army units in the south are packed by Badr mili­ti­a­men with more loy­alty to the party than to the state. As I write, clashes con­tinue.
Moq­tada has put out an alert for the _jaysh al-Mahdi_ mili­tia to be on high alert in Sadr City, Najaf, Nas­riyah, Ama­rah and Basra. In Sadr City and Basra, _jaysh al-Mahdi_ mem­bers have asked to occupy/attack SCIRI and Badr offices, but so far they’ve been kept in check by Moq­tada and Fatah al-Sheikh, one of Moqtada’s sup­port­ers in par­lia­ment.
Or at least he was. Ear­lier this evening, Moq­tada gave the Jaa­fari gov­ern­ment an hour to explain, pull back or apol­o­gize for these attacks. He also called on his sup­port­ers in par­lia­ment, Fatah and oth­ers from the NICE list, to resign because “Moq­tada now con­sid­ers the gov­ern­ment ille­gal,” accord­ing to Abu Hazzim. Fatah has told me he has resigned. A press con­fer­ence is immi­nent.
[UPDATE 8÷25÷05 0032 +0300: Fatah al-Sheikh and 20 other mem­bers have “sus­pended” their duties in the gov­ern­ment and par­lia­ment until those respon­si­ble for the attacks have been pun­ished, he said. It is unclear how this devel­op­ment will affect tomorrow’s vote on the con­sti­tu­tion.]
This may blow over or it may blow up. But these are fast mov­ing events. Com­ing on the eve of the con­sti­tu­tion vote, as well as large clashes between Sunni insur­gents and U.S. and Iraqi forces in west­ern Bagh­dad that are also con­tin­u­ing, these events can only be seen as worrisome.

Iran’s role in Iraq

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Finally! I’ve dropped numer­ous hints over the last few months of Iran­ian involve­ment in Iraq, but I never went into detail. Now, thank­fully, this is the story that has informed my Iran­ian com­ments. I didn’t want to spill too much of the beans because it’s not cool to scoop your own mag­a­zine on a blog, but this is an impor­tant story. I wish I could say I con­tributed to it, but Mick is a hell of a reporter and this is his baby.

Steven Vincent killed in Basra

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Some­one has killed Steven Vin­cent, author of “In the Red Zone,” in Basra two days after he wrote a New York Times op-ed crit­i­ciz­ing the Basra police:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — An Amer­i­can free­lance jour­nal­ist was found dead in the south­ern Iraqi city of Basra, the U.S. Embassy said Wednesday.

Police said Steven Vin­cent had been shot mul­ti­ple times after he and his Iraqi trans­la­tor were abducted at gun­point hours earlier.

“I can con­firm to you that offi­cials in Basra have recov­ered the body of jour­nal­ist Steven Vin­cent,” said embassy spokesman Pete Mitchell. “The U.S. Embassy is work­ing with British mil­i­tary and local Iraqi offi­cials in Basra to deter­mine who is respon­si­ble for the death of this journalist.“

I didn’t know Steve, but his agent, Andrew Stu­art, is my for­mer book agent. He was also a blog­ger and was research­ing another book, this one on post-war Basra. Already the com­ments sec­tion on the lat­est post is fill­ing up. I also didn’t agree with much of what he wrote, but he was intre­pid enough to spend months liv­ing in Basra, which is a hard thing for a west­erner to do.

It is unknown if he was killed for his cov­er­age or if it was kid­nap­ping and rob­bery gone sour. All I know is that my thoughts go out to his fam­ily and friends.

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Six Weeks to Go!

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BAGHDAD–With six weeks to go (more or less) until the Aug. 15 dead­line for turn­ing in their Con­sti­tu­tion home­work, Shi’ites and Sun­nis have finally agreed that there will be some Sun­nis on the Con­sti­tu­tional Com­mit­tee beaver­ing away on the draft of the country’s charter.

There will be 15 Sun­nis on the com­mit­tee, picked mainly by tribal sheikhs and other respected men, and another 10 Sunni “advi­sors” to the com­mit­tee, account­ing for almost 36 per­cent of the 70-person com­mit­tee. (There are sev­eral sub­com­mit­tees work­ing away on spe­cific sec­tions of the draft, but I don’t have any data on those bodies.)

This is a sig­nif­i­cant step, and don’t let naysay­ers tell you oth­er­wise. Most sig­nif­i­cant, per­haps, is the will­ing­ness of a hard­line Shi’ite cleric, Humam al-Hammoudi of the Supreme Coun­cil for Islamic Rev­o­lu­tion in Iraq, to tamp down anti-Ba’athist sen­ti­ment among the Shi’ites and Kurds on the com­mit­tee and, in essence, let bygones be bygones. At least as far as the makeup of the com­mit­tee goes.

“If we were talk­ing about min­istries, names might be more impor­tant,” he said, as quoted by the New York Times. “But since it’s a com­mit­tee, hav­ing the views is more impor­tant than the names.“

I’ve talked with oth­ers, close to Iraqi Prime Min­is­ter Ibrahim Jaa­fari and other Shi’ite movers and shak­ers, and they’re of the same mind. Some of these men are optimistic–such as the advi­sor to the prime min­is­ter I spoke with–while oth­ers are not. One influ­en­tial Shi’a leader, who never fled Iraq dur­ing the Sad­dam years doesn’t think the con­sti­tu­tion will be done on time. The other Shi’a leader, who did, is con­cerned that the dead­line will be met, but the out­come will be less than desirable–at least for sec­u­lar Iraqis.

(I’m not men­tion­ing names because that was the deal I made with them. I hope you’ll trust me enough that these men are play­ers, they know what they’re talk­ing about and that they’re close to the action.)

There are a num­ber of obsta­cles to mak­ing the Aug. 15 dead­line, how­ever. They are:

  1. The role of Islam in legislation;
  2. The sta­tus of Kirkuk;
  3. How much auton­omy will be given to the provinces.

These were all pre­dicted long ago, and noth­ing new has devel­oped the change the issues con­fronting Iraq. The reli­gious Shi’ites in charge of the government–Prime Min­is­ter Ibrahim Jaa­fari, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and others–are close to Iran and want a more Islamist gov­ern­ment, maybe not as severe as Tehran’s wilayat al-faqih, but cer­tainly more Islamic than Iraqis are used to. They want Islam to be the source of leg­is­la­tion instead of a source of legislation.

The Kurds are, some­what pre­dictably, throw­ing a span­ner in the works by insist­ing that sta­tus of Kirkuk be set­tled before the con­sti­tu­tion is drafted, while the Shi’ites want to put off the idea until after the con­sti­tu­tion is approved. The trou­ble is, the Kurds won’t approve the con­sti­tu­tion in the sched­uled Oct. 15 ref­er­en­dum if Kirkuk is left up in the air. They don’t really trust Iraq’s Shi’ite and Sunni Arabs to deal with them fairly on this emo­tional issue, so they’re hold­ing out the threat of not approv­ing the con­sti­tu­tion as a cud­gel to get their way now. Which is what they always do, and it leads to some seri­ous brinkman­ship. I sus­pect the Amer­i­cans will step in at some point and assure the Kurds they have their back if they’ll just yield on this issue.

And as for auton­omy, oh boy. This is a hot issue, and there’s a new wrin­kle. Sec­u­lar Shi’ites in the south, led by a Baqr Yassin, have started a push toward mak­ing the south­ern three provinces of Basra, Amara and Nasariyah into an autonomous zone called “Sumer,” sim­i­lar to the arrange­ment the Kurds have now. He’s call­ing for local con­trol of resources–including the vast oil reserves there–and some kind of con­trol of mil­i­tary units in the region. Grand Aya­tol­lah Ali al-Sistani and the Jaa­fari crowd are opposed to such an idea, say­ing such a devel­op­ment would pose a threat to the unity of Iraq.

There are three other rea­son for their oppo­si­tion: Turkey, Syria and espe­cially Iran. A fed­eral Iraq, with strong provin­cial gov­ern­ments based on eth­nic or sec­tar­ian lines is seen as a threat in those three coun­tries who all have restive Kur­dish pop­u­la­tions that have been han­ker­ing for autonomous regions of their own in line with Iraqi Kur­dis­tan. Iran, espe­cially, would face a dif­fi­cult situation–well, dif­fi­cult for the mullahs–because it’s incred­i­bly diverse. Per­sians make up 51 per­cent, Azeri 24 per­cent, Gilaki and Mazan­darani 8 per­cent, Kurds 7 per­cent, Arabs 3 per­cent, Lur, Baluch and Turk­men 2 per­cent each and “other” make 1 per­cent. If “Sumer” became a real­ity along­side an autonomous Kurdistan–each with their own sources of petro-wealth–the Arab pop­u­la­tion of Khuzes­tan just across the Persian/Arabian Gulf would likely try to join them or form their own eth­nic enclave. You’re look­ing at a sce­nario of a Balka­nized Mid­dle East.

The ques­tion you have to ask is why are sec­u­lar Shi’ites push­ing for Sumer? And why is Baqr Yassin, a for­mer Ba’athist opposed to Sad­dam Hus­sein and allied with the Syr­ian branch of the party, the man to lead the move­ment? Because the sec­u­lar Shi’ites in the south are scared to death of Iran and its suf­fo­cat­ing brand of Islam. Already Basra, which I’m told used to be quite a party town, is pop­u­lated by black-sheathed women and no liquor stores, cin­e­mas or any­thing else sec­u­lar Iraqis enjoy. Mili­tias such as the Badr Organization–formerly com­manded by al-Hakim, now head of SCIRI–which fought along­side the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards in the Iran-Iraq War (1980−88) con­trol the cops. Free­lance vice and moral­ity squads roam the streets. And this is all at the urg­ing of Iran, which has deeply infil­trated its neigh­bor. The old Ba’athist Yassin is fight­ing the Iran-Iraq war all over again–as are many of the Ba’athist insur­gents who strike at Jaafari’s Shi’ite gov­ern­ment because, they say, “It’s Iran­ian.” And it’s why Adnan al-Dulaimi, the cus­to­dian of Iraq’s waqf and who claims to speak for sev­eral insur­gent groups, calls for Sunni par­tic­i­pa­tion in Iraqi pol­i­tics so they can com­bat shu’ubiyyah, a racist term favored by Ba’athists that basi­cally calls Iraqi Shi’ites “Persians“–although “dirty Per­sians” might be more accu­rate in its inter­pre­ta­tion. This has enraged my Shi’ite sources.

I can’t speak to the truth of such charges. I believe that Iran is deeply, deeply involved in a great deal of mis­chief from the head of the Gulf all the way up to Bagh­dad. But men who have to know what is going on because they can get killed if they don’t are wor­ried about the future, and what kind of coun­try Iraq will become.

In end, it may not mat­ter who’s on the com­mit­tee to write the con­sti­tu­tion if the three main groups can’t see past their self-interests–or their patrons’.