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Sistani Is Winning, and That Helps U.S. (Juan Cole, June 6, 2004, LA Times)

Fortunately for the United States, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the chief and most revered Shiite religious figure in Iraq, has won every important political battle so far. He has successfully pushed the Bush administration to involve the United Nations and to schedule free and fair elections for next winter. Sistani's guarded acceptance of the current process, as long as it leads to democratic elections, augurs well for the new government. Yet continued trouble on Sistani's right in the form of the bombastic young cleric Muqtada Sadr could complicate matters.

Sistani supports the newly appointed government even though many religious Shiites see themselves as losers in its makeup. Although the new prime minister, Iyad Allawi, is a Shiite, he is also a secularist who spent much of his career organizing ex-Baath officers to attempt to overthrow Saddam Hussein. As such, he is hardly counted by most religious Shiites as one of their own. The powerful Sadrist Shiite movement, one branch of which is led by Sadr, was excluded from the interim government.

Religious Shiites were not altogether shunted aside. One of two vice presidencies went to Ibrahim Jafari, leader of the Shiite Dawa Party, which seeks an Islamic state, albeit one ruled by the laity. The Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq received the powerful ministry of finance, but it had hoped for a higher office and more governmental positions.

Sistani was shown a list of candidates for high office and did not object to any of the contenders, including Allawi. Last Thursday, he acknowledged that the new government lacked legitimacy because it was not elected, but he expressed hope that it would carry out its duties and prepare the way for elections early next year. Sistani also demanded U.N. guarantees of full sovereignty for Iraq. Still, many observers are puzzled by his acquiescence to the current process.

The answer is that all of Sistani's demands, with the exception of his timetable, have been met — he wanted earlier elections — and even his timetable has been delayed a mere six months. The original U.S. plan on the transfer of sovereignty, announced Nov. 15, called for elections based on provincial councils in May 2004. But Sistani feared that such elections could be stage-managed by the United States and thus would not be truly democratic. Only a freely elected government, he insisted, could honestly claim legitimacy in Iraq. Despite his religious conservatism, Sistani has embraced key elements of Enlightenment thinking about democracy.

Someone never read his Joel Chandler Harris

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 12, 2004 2:57 PM