Political Gridlock and the Big Shiite Love-in
Shiite followers in Karbala, Iraq cut the tops of their heads to signify sadness over the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.
News: Among Shiites, widespread zealotry doesn't translate into political solidarity.
February 24, 2005
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It was in southern Lebanon two years ago that I first became hooked on ashoura, the Shiite holiday on which the faithful commemorate the martyrdom of Hussein bin Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, by whipping themselves and slicing their heads open with swords. There was no way I was going to miss this year, especially since ground zero is Karbala, only 100 km southwest of Baghdad, where Hussein (or what was left of him after a famous battle 1400 years ago) is buried.
So it was back through the triangle of death, where thanks to the increased presence of Iraqi army and police on the road, things seem to have gotten a touch safer in the last month or so. However, some of the pilgrims were walking from Baghdad to Karbala, which struck me as wholly inadvisable. (Not to mention that it's a two-hour drive).
One of the notable things about ashoura is how defensive everyone is about it, especially when meeting a westerner. They're worried we might think it's strange that they bleed (sometimes to the point of passing out) in order to show their sadness at Hussein's passing. The practice has actually been banned in Iran, so the only places I know of where it still takes place in earnest are southern Lebanon and Iraq.
"What do you think of it?" asked my friend Shiekh Fouad, a Sadr representative in Najaf who declined to accompany me to Karbala for fear the place would be attacked. In Iraq, if someone wants to know your opinion, especially about a religious celebration that's banned in many countries because it involves cutting one's head open and running about beating oneself, it's usually a loaded question. So I chose my answer with great care.
"Well, Catholics drink wine and eat bread in church every Sunday. Ashoura doesn't seem any stranger than that." It worked.
After lunch at Shiekh Fouad's, it was on to Karbala, where hundreds of thousands of people had descended upon the city, camping out in the plaza between the two shrines and on the sidewalks — everywhere, really, but the mostly empty hotels. The richer pilgrims had apparently decided to have ashoura at home this year, and the heavy restrictions on Iranians coming over the border were hard on those in the tourist trade.
But does widespread zealotry translate into political solidarity? Apparently not. It took a week of bickering (along with a couple days off for ashoura) between the parties of the improperly named United Iraqi Alliance, the main Shiite coalition, over their choice of nominee for prime minister in the new government. It culminated with the improbable political comeback of Ahmed Chalabi.
In the end, Ibrahim Jaafari, the leader of the conservative Dawa Party, triumphed. I hedged my bets terribly wrong on Tuesday, trying to catch Chalabi's top flak, Mudthar Shawcut, as he returned to his fortified compound in Baghdad's upscale Mansour district after the meeting that ended with Jaafari being declared the victor. I was nearly run over by his three-car convoy for my trouble, arriving at his driveway at the same time he did. Cheers to the armed thug (one of Shawcut's guards at the house) who shoved me out of the way.
Anyhow, Shawcut declined to speak with me, and by the time I got back to the hotel I found out everyone else knew what I had already assumed, based on Shawcut's refusal to speak: Chalabi had dropped out. I was shattered. Wouldn't the irony of Iraq's first elected prime minister being unable to travel to Jordan have been delectable? I guess we'll just have to settle for the irony that Chalabi, a convicted embezzler, might become finance minister.
But now that the clergy-backed UIA, which holds 140 seats in the 275-member National Assembly (a two-thirds majority, or 182 votes, is needed to pass legislation and appoint executives) has shown weakness, others smell blood.
US-appointed prime minister Ayad Allawi, whose secular party won 40 seats in the election, is now saying he will attempt to build a coalition and make a bid to retain his post. He is largely playing on unease about Jaafari's conservatism and the specter of Islamic law, and promising he will fix the security situation. His on-the-ground popularity might also be boosted by his past willingness to rescind Paul Bremer's disastrous de-Baathification policy, which removed functionaries like elementary school teachers and engineers along with high-ranking members of the former ruling party.
For their part, the Kurds are renewing their hard-line regarding four important points: that civil law be the only law, that all refugees be allowed to return, that the Kurdish area retain the de facto independence it has enjoyed since 1991, and that Kirkuk be administered by said Kurdish authority. The Kurds have opted out of the fight for the prime minister position, instead settling to have Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two major Kurdish parties, fill the largely ceremonial post of president. They will fight to have PUK member Faoud Massoum head the committee that drafts the constitution, which should, if things go according to plan, far outlast the interim assembly, which is scheduled for replacement by another national election in December. It will be curious to see how the Shiites go along with the Kirkuk idea, since the real losers are Sunni Arabs who have virtually no representation in the government.
"With all of the weight of (Ayatollah Ali Al-) Sistani, they didn't get the absolute majority," one Kurdish politician told me today, referring to the top Shiite cleric in Iraq who had reportedly backed the UIA. "There should be some compromise, but I think the compromise will not be on federalism. It may be on a ministerial post here and there. … Proportionally, Allawi has more votes than the Shiite list — he was running on a single platform."
Back to that platform — Allawi's moderate stance on Baathism, though it's not the card he's playing, may be his greatest asset, especially as fears increase that Jaafari and other politicians who were formerly hunted down by the Baath party will exact further revenge. The military wing of Dawa, Jaafari's party, and the Badr Brigades (the military wing of the other major exile party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) have already been accused of carrying out assassinations since the end of the invasion, and anecdotally, they are picking up again. In Najaf this weekend, I couldn't help but notice the fresh graffiti on a wall close to the mayor's house: "killing Baathists is a religious duty." (Ashoura celebrations were banned under Saddam's government, on pain of death). Perhaps it should come as no surprise they are willing to negotiate.
Sitting in a coffee shop in Karrada, an ethnically-mixed neighborhood in the middle of Baghdad, Emad Shahab Ahmed, a former Baathist and Brigadier General in the Air Force, glances around nervously to see who might be listening.
He says, "If you come now to remove [Baathists], it means you remove about two to three million people who are in business. There was no chance to take a job if you didn't go inside the Baath Party, and those people, not all of them are bad."
Those who can afford it have left the country, but Ahmed has resigned himself to the tables being turned.
"You make your own security, you get your nephews and you family for protection. You sleep with pistol under your pillow and an AK [-47] next to your bed."
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.
