Drawing lines (And Crossing Them)
Chief of the Association of Muslim Scholars Harth al-Dhari, left, speaks with other unidentified members of the Association.
News: Sunnis and the Shiite followers of Moqtada al-Sadr make common cause against the US occupation.
February 16, 2005
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Sitting outside Umm Al-Qura (Mother of All Battles) Mosque on the far northwest end of Baghdad, my translator, Hiba, and I began to let our hopes get the better of us. The Association of Muslim Scholars, the group of Sunni clerics that have been at the fore of boycotting the electoral process and have been targeted for encouraging resistance to the occupation and attacks against the new government, had called a press conference for 11 a.m. to make their first official statement since the election. It was nearly three in the afternoon, and frustrated journalists were still sitting outside, smoking cigarettes and bullshitting with the guards. But they were willing to wait, expecting a pivotal moment. Amongst the press corps, the consensus was that the Muslim Scholars were going to declare resistance futile and admit defeat in the face of a 60 percent voter turnout and the might of the US military machine, that they might finally be pragmatic and end the fighting that has exacted a far, far heavier toll upon Iraqis than the US military.
"They're going to give up," Hiba said. "They have to give up. They're just discussing the best way to say it."
Salam, a friend of mine who had come with us, pointed to the ornate and quite large houses built for the sheikhs on the grounds of the mosque, which is an impressive piece of architecture, its minarets constructed to resemble SCUD missiles and Kalashnikovs and its purple dome glistening in the harsh afternoon light.
"You see?" Salam said. "You will never find a Shiite imam living like this."
That point is irrefutable. All of the massive mosques Saddam completed during his "Islam period" were, and continue to be, Sunni mosques. Inside Umm Al-Qura's museum is a Koran supposedly written in the blood of Saddam Hussein.
Finally we filed into the mosque with the rest of the press corps, at least two dozen of us. I was the only actual western journalist to attend the conference in person, the rest having sent their translators or local reporters, on the general assumption that there is a giant net to catch white people as they attempt to exit Umm Al-Qura. But the real danger is not your nationality, it's who you work for.
"Are you with Al-Hurra?" the guard asked us on the way in.
"No."
"Okay, go ahead. But Al-Hurra is not allowed."
Once inside, it still took another half an hour or so for things to get moving. We were surprised when Abdul Hadi Daraji, a representative of rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, sat down in front of the microphones with Harath Al-Dari and Subhi Abdul Hamid, the Scholars' spokesmen.
"We want the constitution to be written under these conditions," Abdul Hamid began, reading a list of demands that would have to be met by the new government in exchange for the Scholars' participation in the political process. These included the release of all prisoners in US and Iraqi custody, that the right to resist the occupation by military means be recognized and that a timetable for the withdrawal of occupying forces be provided.
"Because they do not care about those who boycotted the elections," Abdul Hamid continued, "the government doesn't have any authority over the country."
The Scholars were joined in their statement by 27 other groups, including Sadr's. There are precedents for such cooperation despite the Shia vs. Sunni paradigm. My last stay in Iraq began in April, on the tail end of fighting in both Falluja, Baghdad and the south. Sadr sent men to fight with the resistance in Falluja in April, and in May I watched sheikhs from Falluja roll into Najaf with truckloads of "old blankets" and other assistance for Sadr's militiamen, the Jeish Al-Mehdi. By mid-May a tentative truce had been reached between Sadr and the US military. But when the Mehdi began burying anti-tank mines and 160-mm mortar shells in the streets of Baghdad in late August and receiving mortar training from Fallujis, I knew I couldn't stomach another round of fighting and I got the hell out. I seem to end up in Baghdad during buildups, and I have that sinking feeling I am witnessing another.
Usually resistance is spoken of in coded language. A press conference demand to have the right recognized, regardless of whether the demand will be met, takes things up a notch. The country's new leaders have also refused to set deadlines. The rest of the demands will be ignored as well, and the scholars and leaders of the Sadr movement will continue to be targeted for arrest by the US and Iraqi militaries. It seems a crazy bet with little potential payoff. Brave, but insane.
"There is some truth to the Sunni/Shiite thing, but I see it as political drift being contained by religious and sectarian feelings," said Womidh Nadhmi, the former head of Baghdad University's political science department, who argues that the country's most severe fault line is the occupation, not whether Ali was the rightful successor to Mohamed.
"I want to assure that the Sadr movement is with all groups that are against America's involvement in the country," Daraji said.
I even managed to get in a pair of questions, which is far better than I used to do at US press conferences -- so I decided to try a rather irreverent one, read by Salam, who was only too happy to oblige.
"Palestine is occupied but they held elections," he pointed out to Dari.
"The circumstances in Palestine are different," Dari replied. "There is unity there, all the groups oppose the occupation, and the Israeli troops went out of the cities during the voting. They have spent 56 years under occupation and only now are they able to vote."
I thought it was a pretty good answer. Salam wasn't impressed.
"We have to be occupied for 56 years before we can all agree to participate in elections?" he muttered as he sat back down.
Most of the Iraqi population, while remaining opposed to the occupation, seems to have turned against the resistance as well.
"Only 20 percent of it is real mukowama (resistance)," said Montaha Jumaily, the brother of a man who was tortured to death by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib, when I expressed surprise that said she was going to vote in the elections last month. "The rest are terrorists."
Hardly a day passes when I don't think of the words of my friend Samer, who at the outset of the occupation said one of the most cogent things I have heard here. "The resistance, for every American soldier they kill, 10 Iraqis will die." One wonders which side the average Iraqi will run out of patience for first.
"If I were (US-appointed prime minister Ayad) Allawi, I would have used weapons in Falluja," said an Iraqi correspondent for an American paper as we waited for the presser to begin. I wonder if she knows they actually did.
David Enders is a 24-year-old freelance journalist who has spent more than a year reporting from Iraq since the end of the invasion. His first book, Baghdad Bulletin: Dispatches on the American Occupation, will be released by the University of Michigan Press in April.
