[Shadow_Group] Sistani: Iraq's Shadow Ruler

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

Another interesting article from Time magazine that
explains in greater detail how Sistani might control
the Iraq government AFTER the elections...
===================
Iraq's Shadow Ruler 
When Ayatullah Sistani speaks, millions obey. Can the
conscience of the nation make it safe for democracy? 
By JOHANNA MCGEARY BAGHDAD
Oct. 25, 2004

FROM:
http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1101041025-725077,00.html<http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1101041025-725077,00.html>
The very name Sistani is shrouded in mystery. Few
Westerners have ever met the most powerful man in
Iraq. If they did, they would encounter a thin,
bearded figure with little interest in the trappings
of office. Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, the
revered leader of the nation's 15 million Shi'ites,
receives visitors, powerful and meek alike, in a
plain, bare room in his modest home down a dusty alley
in the holy city of Najaf. He sits on the floor with
his back to the wall, dressed always in the same
simple robe and turban. (An intimate says he hasn't
refreshed his wardrobe in 10 years.) He is modest and
respectful, and listens more than he talks. But his
charisma is striking. His eyes "look into your
psyche," says Mohammed Kamil al-Rudaie, a university
professor in Baghdad who has met him often. "He has a
kind of esp for understanding people and tailoring his
answer to suit the person in front of him." 
And when Sistani speaks, Iraqis obey. At 74, the
Shi'ite spiritual leader is widely acknowledged as the
conscience of the nation, armed with a unique moral
authority to arbitrate Iraq's future. Though he was
quiet during the long, hard years of Shi'ite
repression under Saddam Hussein, Sistani has emerged
since the dictator's fall as the country's pivotal
political figure. Iraq's Kurds and Sunnis, as well as
Shi'ites, pay heed to his views. His reach extends as
far as Washington, where he has repeatedly forced the
Bush Administration to yield to his demands and issued
decrees that have altered U.S. plans for postwar Iraq.
The reclusive ayatullah inserts himself into the
political fray whenever he feels it is necessary. Just
last week he issued a statement encouraging all Iraqis
to participate in the election scheduled for January,
and he called on the Iraqi government to start
registering voters. The powers that be in Iraq ignore
him at their peril. 

Sistani proved his authority in August, when Najaf had
sunk into chaos. As the fighting began, he abruptly
quit the city to seek medical treatment abroad. The
rumors started: Sistani was dying; Sistani was afraid;
Sistani was losing influence to Muqtada al-Sadr, the
brash young cleric whose militiamen were battling U.S.
troops to a standstill. But on Aug. 26, as the
Americans were on the verge of assaulting one of
Iraq's most sacred Shi'ite shrines, Sistani showed he
was still the Man. Straight from medical treatment for
a heart condition in London, he was driven into Najaf
at the head of thousands of unarmed loyalists who had
answered his call to march on the city. Within hours,
he had brought an end to postwar Iraq's bloodiest
battle. Even the cocksure al-Sadr bowed his head when
he came to sit on a threadbare carpet across from
Sistani and acceded to the cleric's commands. 

In some Western minds, an elderly white-bearded figure
in a black turban who is adored by the masses evokes
the dark image of another Shi'ite mullah: Ayatullah
Ruhollah Khomeini, who turned Iran into a stern,
inimical Islamic theocracy. Sistani is of a different
breed. 

He has insisted on rapid elections to choose a
government reflecting "the will of the people" and
forswears any executive role for himself or fellow
clerics. But Sistani is equally determined that after
300 years of domination by Iraq's minority Sunnis, the
time has come for Shi'ites to take the reins of power.
If he has opposed al-Sadr and others who seek control
through violence, Sistani has been just as rigorous in
refusing to align himself with the U.S. That may give
many Americans pause as they contemplate the U.S.
investment in the embattled country's future. But
Sistani's moral stature and unyielding push for a new
democratic order have made him America's best hope for
preventing Iraq from spinning into anarchy. 

His intervention in Najaf paved the way for the deal
cut last week, by which al-Sadr agreed to disarm his
militia and enter the political arena. Here's the
story of how Sistani became the country's supreme
power and what he envisions for Iraq: means of ascent
in the Shi'ite universe, the first requisite for
leadership is erudition, measured by a lifetime's
knowledge of Islamic principles and law. Sistani's
learning is universally recognized. According to his
official biography, the child born into a pious,
scholarly family in rugged northeastern Iran began
learning the Koran at age 5. He absorbed the
conservative traditions of the Islamic seminaries in
Qum, where he arrived as a 19-year-old prodigy. Three
years later, he left to study in the Iraqi city of
Najaf, the prestigious 1,000-year-old home to some of
Shi'ism's most prominent teachers of jurisprudence; he
has lived there ever since. Najaf's schools were
filled with as many Persians as Arabs. Sistani never
lost his thick native accent and remains an Iranian
citizen, which has made him a target of Arab rivals
like al-Sadr who disparage his ethnicity. 

Sistani excelled in Najaf and soon became a disciple
of Grand Ayatullah Abul Qassim al-Khoei. At the
unusually young age of 31, Sistani reached the senior
level of accomplishment called ijtihad, which entitled
him to pass his own judgments on religious questions. 

Sistani kept his distance from Khomeini, who was then
in exile in Najaf and already honing his militant
philosophy of temporal clerical rule. Al-Khoei,
Sistani's mentor, preached the "quietist" approach, in
which religious leaders address matters of
spirituality and behavior but stay out of politics.
Sistani embraced that philosophy. 

For 50 years, Sistani has devoted his waking hours to
solitary prayer, reading and teaching. He has acquired
legions of students, attracted by his charisma, sound
logic, prodigious research and quick wit. On social
issues Sistani has always been an Islamic
conservative. But unlike many fellow clerics, he
possesses a keen appetite for subjects ranging far
beyond theology-modern science, history, political
philosophy, biography, comparative religions, current
events-and employs an unusual freedom of expression in
reinterpreting religious questions. "He merges Islamic
principles and modern life," says al-Rudaie, the
Baghdad professor. "His rules are not frozen in time."
Groomed by al-Khoei for supreme religious authority,
Sistani took on the mantle of marja, or object of
emulation, the highest rank among Shi'ite clerics,
soon after al-Khoei's death in 1992. 

Sistani proved himself an assertive competitor among
the jostling senior ayatullahs, including Muqtada
al-Sadr's influential father, who was assassinated by
Saddam in 1999. Perhaps even more important, Sistani
inherited the treasure chest of religious tithes and
pilgrim's donations that al-Khoei had amassed, a
fortune soon augmented by his own popularity. That
enabled Sistani to fund a vast and flourishing network
of agents and allies. From his shabby Najaf office, he
runs a formidable array of schools, libraries,
hospitals, charities and even technology centers
spread across Iraq and Iran, as well as outreach
offices from the Middle East to Western Europe. 

Though the marja is akin to a Roman Catholic Pope in
religious authority, no college of mullahs elects him.
Every one of the faithful chooses a cleric as his
spiritual guide, whose rulings he will follow. Clerics
rise to the top on the basis of their popular
following as well as the esteem of their colleagues.
In a country given to flash and corruption, Sistani
has earned widespread admiration for his ascetic
lifestyle and upright reputation. For decades, he has
lived out of public view with his wife, two sons and
several daughters. They inhabit a humble rented house
a few hundred yards from the golden-domed shrine of
Imam Ali, the Shi'ites' most venerated martyr. His
meals are the frugal fare of the poor: tea, bread,
yogurt, a bit of cheese, vegetables. As a result of
the meager diet, he suffers on and off from anemia as
well as the blocked arteries treated in London. Tall
but never robust, he now looks frail and old. 

Sistani's invisibility is in part cultivated, some
aides and rivals say, to enhance the aura of mystery
that contributes to his appeal. 

Says Sheik Haitham Nasrawi, a representative of
al-Sadr's father: "When he sits behind closed doors,
he is seen as a man who makes no mistakes." But during
Saddam's reign of terror, Sistani's seclusion turned
into house arrest imposed by the regime. He endured it
as a "religious duty to defend the Shi'ites' sacred
center," says Tawfiq al-Yassery, a secular Shi'ite
politician with close ties to the ayatullah. After
Saddam fell, Sistani faced new threats from al-Sadr's
militia, and now armed guards tightly control access
to his house. He is still most comfortable operating
behind closed doors; he hasn't conducted Friday
prayers for years and even discourages the
dissemination of posters bearing his image. He has
refused to meet with U.S. officials and says he will
not talk to any Westerners as long as their armies
occupy Iraq. The Americans complain that Sistani's
reclusiveness has muddied lines of communication, as
officials struggle to interpret his views secondhand. 

For all his seclusion, Sistani is worldly wise about
Iraq's current realities. "He has his hands on the
pulse of the nation," says Hussein Shahristani, a
former nuclear scientist who returned from exile to
advise Sistani. "It's at his fingertips." Sistani sees
a steady stream of aides and agents based around the
country as well as Iraqi leaders eager to court and
consult him. Sheik Jameel al-Qurayshi, who represents
Sistani in Baghdad's restive Sadr City district,
visits the ayatullah at least once a week to discuss
the fine points of Islamic practice and get political
advice for handling his neighborhood. Sistani's
declarations are succinct and to the point. "He makes
no decision until he is totally clear he has come to
the right conclusion," says Shahristani. "He says
exactly what he means, and he sticks to it"-something
the Bush Administration learned the hard way. "I'm
very glad Washington conceded on early elections, or
we'd have been in trouble," says a Western diplomat in
Baghdad. Sistani "has a few gut core beliefs, and he
doesn't change them." 

But Sistani tends to express principles that leave the
details open to interpretation. He communicates them
before and after sunset prayers, when he addresses his
followers' 1,001 questions on proper religious
observance, social behavior and personal conduct. He
engages in a busy written dialogue with his followers
by letter and via the Internet. Not long ago, Rifat
al-Amin, a university student in Baghdad, wrote the
ayatullah to ask whether protests by his followers
should take place in narrow streets where they would
block traffic. The marja replied that demonstrations
should take place in wide squares instead. Al-Amin
also asked if Sistani accepted "what was going on" in
Iraq. He received back a simple no. 

What Kind Of Democrat? 

Sistani's personal history would be interesting but
unimportant if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq. The fall
of Saddam left the country in chaos, with a power
vacuum at the top. The Shi'ite masses naturally looked
to Sistani for direction, says Shahristani, and the
ayatullah felt compelled by religious duty to step in.
"He believes at a crisis time like this, the marja
must guide the people," says al-Qurayshi. 

So the cleric who had shied away from politics all his
life began to issue fatwas of profound political
importance. 

Sistani quickly emerged as a voice of restraint,
urging Iraqis to be patient and eschew violence. He
told Shi'ites to neither help nor hinder the U.S.
invaders, although he made his opposition to foreign
occupation clear by counseling citizens to ask
Americans, "When are you leaving Iraq?" He advised
people against revenge killings of Baathists. Iraqi
and U.S. officials agree that his calming influence
was critical in tamping down Shi'ite resistance. "That
was the only reason there was no bloodbath in those
early days," says a secular Iraqi politician. When the
orgy of looting after Saddam's departure ran
unchecked, Sistani stood up to label it immoral and
wrong. 

Overnight, thieves were piling up stolen air
conditioners, computers, art and relics at the doors
of Shi'ite mosques. 

At the same time, Sistani has forced the U.S. to
abandon many of its designs for Iraq's future. When
Washington laid out a lengthy timetable for returning
Iraq to self-rule, Sistani's objections forced the
Bush Administration to deliver a swift handover
instead. 

He has been uncompromising in his call for prompt
elections and in his determination that Iraqis write
their own constitution. When the U.S. proposed a
complex caucus system for voting, Sistani responded by
putting 100,000 peaceful demonstrators into the
streets to support his call for national one-man,
one-vote elections by January 2005. 

With a word, he temporarily blocked the signing of the
U.S.-designed interim constitution last spring because
it gave too much power to minority Kurds and too
little to Islamic law. When the elected assembly
drafts a permanent constitution next year, he will
insist it maintains Shi'ite dominance as well as
strong national unity. 

The critical issue, of course, is how Islamic Sistani
wants Iraq to be. He has made it clear that foreign
powers cannot be allowed to dictate the country's form
of government, nor does he want to replicate a Western
model. He has said Islamic law should govern family
and personal matters. "His vision of the good state,"
says a Western diplomat in Baghdad, "is not where my
wife and daughter would want to live." But Sistani's
aides say he considers the Khomeini and Taliban
experiments in theocracy failures-too extreme and
rigid for modern society, especially one as
demographically diverse as Iraq. 

And he opposes al-Sadr in large measure because the
upstart is pushing to make Iraq a carbon copy of Iran,
with al-Sadr at the helm. 

Sistani aides like al-Qurayshi describe the cleric's
vision as a "democratic Islamic state," a
parliamentary system whose laws comport with Muslim
principles. He would allow de facto separation of
church and state, leaving the daily business of
government to politicians and technocrats-under the
umbrella of religious values. He sees his role, says a
secular politician, "as the country's guardian wise
man." So when Iraq's elected parliament takes up
issues related to religion, says University of
Michigan professor Juan Cole, an expert on modern
Middle Eastern history, "he'll issue a ruling and
expect the Shi'ite members to obey." Since a large
minority in Iraq does not share the Shi'ite faith,
Sistani recognizes his sect's brand of Shari'a cannot
be imposed on the country. Iraq's system, he often
says, is "up to the will of the people." But once
Shi'ites attain majority power, his aides acknowledge,
Sistani hopes they will democratically vote in Islamic
laws. 

Despite Washington's unspoken dependence on Sistani to
keep disaffected Shi'ites in check, U.S. officials
read dark omens in his increasing activism. They don't
want to set a precedent in which the grand ayatullah
always has the final say. And the specter of Khomeini
deeply colors the Bush Administration's view.
Officials are wary that Sistani's long-term interests
are not aligned with the U.S.'s. Some fear that he
wants to become the political puppetmaster, running a
religious regime behind the veil of a titular secular
leader. Others distrust his Iranian background and
connections and are worried that he would take
instructions from the mullahs next door. Sistani and
his supporters may not want a strict Islamic republic,
but if they win, says Kenneth Katzman at Washington's
Congressional Research Service, "they're going to have
very, very close ties to Tehran." But Iranian
authorities say Sistani has well-established financial
and philosophical independence from Tehran. 

Those who know Sistani say fears of outside influence
are misplaced. 

They describe a devout but independent cleric whose
religious calling requires him to rise above both the
intrigues of day-to-day politics and the pursuit of
personal political power. "The Islamic view," says
Dhafer al-Qaisey, a Sistani representative in southern
Baghdad, "is that a religious leader must take
responsibility to say what is right and what is not.
Then it is up to you whether to follow that advice." 

Despite the stream of politicos knocking on his door
to seek his blessing, Sistani has said he will not
anoint any person or party. He even refuses to allow
visitors to be photographed with him, for fear they
might turn pictures into propaganda. 

His overriding motive, intimates say, is to seize this
moment in history to ensure that Shi'ite hopes are not
dashed yet again. For centuries, the sect has ended up
on the wrong side of power, and Sistani wants to make
sure it comes out on top this time. He has been
adamant about elections because he believes Shi'ites
can get what they want at the ballot box, and the rest
of the world will have to accept it. Some Sistani
aides say there is an implicit warning in that: if
Shi'ite expectations of electoral victory are
thwarted, Sistani could call his followers to rebel.
"He does not think of jihad now," says Ali al-Mousawi
al-Waath, Sistani's agent in the Baghdad shrine
district of Khadimiya, "but that depends on what the
Americans do." Iraq's Shi'ites, he says, "follow our
marja. If he tells us to die, we die." 

No one thinks Sistani is close to giving such an
order. He is too "humane," says Shahristani. When
al-Sadr's soldiers disobeyed Sistani's directive not
to spill blood in Najaf, Sistani "wept for hours" over
the young Iraqi lives that were lost, says an
intimate. A diplomat in Baghdad regards Sistani as a
"cautious man who doesn't go out on a limb." Sistani's
men say he has repeatedly doused al-Sadr's uprisings
because he fears violence will only cost the Shi'ites
their legitimate claim to power. 

But his aides say he is growing increasingly worried
that the U.S. is manipulating the electoral process to
limit Shi'ite influence. White House and State
Department officials are concerned that in a
completely open election, Shi'ites might emerge with
an enormous majority that would dangerously shunt
Sunnis and Kurds aside. The National Security
Council's Iraq point man, Robert Blackwill, came up
with the idea of uniting members of the former and
current interim governments, made up largely of exiles
chosen for their ethnic balance and pro-American
attitudes, into a single slate. That would give
Washington's favored candidates, who have
well-organized political operations but are not
individually popular, a way to stay in power.
Blackwill, says a well-placed U.S. official, "created
the idea to counter Sistani's power." Blackwill's
office claims that while he was developing the plan,
some Iraqis hit on the same idea "independently." But
the ayatullah has indicated he disapproves of the
unified slate. "He's afraid the way the voting is
being set up, the Shi'ites might be cheated out of
their majority," says Michigan's Cole. The system has
also encouraged the curious alliance of the religious
al-Sadr and the secular Ahmad Chalabi, former U.S.
favorite, who see in each other a way to trump
Sistani's power. The ayatullah is agitating for
changes that would give Islamic parties aligned with
him a higher profile. While the cleric has not tried
to negotiate the specifics, observers say that is as
far into the grit of politics as he has ventured. He
has to show Shi'ites that the election can benefit
them, says Katzman. If it doesn't, he risks a damaging
loss of legitimacy among ordinary Shi'ites that
demagogues like al-Sadr will try to exploit. 

The last thing Washington wants is to help someone
like al-Sadr rise to power. "Sistani's the most
moderate ayatullah in sight," says a Western diplomat
in Baghdad, "and the U.S. needs to see eye to eye with
him on basic political steps." That means the Bush
Administration may have to accept that the version of
democracy it went to war to create in Iraq may not be
the one it gets. To achieve a stable, free Iraq,
there's no going around the power-and preferences-of
Grand Ayatullah Sistani. 

- With reporting by the Iraqi staff of TIME/Najaf,
Massimo Calabresi/ Washington and Nahid Siamdoust/
Tehran


 



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