'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Sistani speaks to the Sunnis

On Friday, I wrote here that, " I would love to see [Sistani] or someone high up on the UIA list that he helped form making a really dramatic move to reach out to the Sunnis." Yesterday, it seems that a "source close to Sistani"-- and also, one dearly hopes, one expressly authorized by him-- was trying to do just that.

As reported and translated by Juan Cole today, this Sistanist source told al-Hayat yesterday that,

"The representation of our Sunni brethren in the coming government must be effective, regardless of the results of the elections."

I believe that the source may well have been using al-Hayat as a way to communicate with many Iraqi Sunni figures inside and outside the country. Hayat is Saudi owned, and is widely read throughout the Middle East.

I'm sure that Sistani has numerous other ways of communicating his point of view with selected Iraqi Sunni leaders as well. But to reach a broad array of Sunnis, inside and outside the country, using al-Hayat would be a sensible choice.

In what the Sistanist "source" (un-named) told al-Hayat, he also attempted a vigorous defense of Sistani's argument that the elections should not, at this point, be any further delayed beyond the presently scheduled Jan. 30 date. (This could also be a communication with Muqtada Sadr and others within the Shiite community who have started to argue openly for boycott or postponement.)

However, the source indicated that Sistani might yet change his mind on the no-postponement issue. In Cole's version:

" ... If Sistani became convinced that there was a likelihood of widespread fraud in the elections, he would not hesitate to urge that they be boycotted. But for the moment, he said, the alternative to elections seems to be chaos... "

Juan's translation of the article has a few elisions and what seem to me to be questionable renditions of the original. For example, in the immediately preceding quote, according to the Hayat original, the source was saying (HC version):

" ... and the Marjaiyah [the Shiite source of authority] could at any time issue a fatwa to boycott the elections in the event that it becomes convinced that they will see widespread [election] fraud. And the alternative to elections, as we see it, is chaos... "

I also went back to the original to try to gain a clearer idea of exactly what message it might have been that Sistani was trying to send to the Sunnis, and I came up with this translation, again slightly and, I think, non-trivially different from Juan's rendering of this section:

[Source:] " ...There is a [fixed] timetable and an international decision to create elected institutions charged with formulating the Constitution and empowered to demand that the occupation exit from Iraq, drawing on the popular legitimacy of these institutions."

And the source said, "The representation of our Sunni brothers in the future government must be effective, regardless of the results of the elections," stressing that this position, "is different from the American proposal to designate a quota for the Sunnis in the new majlis [constitutional assembly/ parliament]-- a proposal that our Sunni brothers rejected before the Shiites did." And he recalled that the Marjaiyah waged, "a bitter struggleto bring down the original American proposal that mandated the appointment [rather than election] of the Constitution-writing assembly...

The difference between my rendering and Juan's may not be large, but my reading of the Hayat original would seem to allow slightly more possibility of the Marjaiyah pursuing some kind of a formula for safeguarding the "effectiveness" of the Sunni representation than Juan's does. It makes clear (as Juan's does) that the source said that Sunni representation "must be effective, regardless of the results of the elections". The idea of exploring some reaching-out-to-the-Sunnis "formula" is perhaps being floated, right there. But then, according to the Hayat report, the source is notably NOT saying that Sistani in person (with all the authority that he represents) is opposed to the American proposal of a quota; the report has him, more calmly simply stating that the position he is articulating "is different from" the American proposal.

Well, I wonder what a possible reach-out-to the-Sunnis formula might look like? Especially if it is different from the Americans' "quota" proposal.... Here is one possibility: It is actually, I think, quite possible that Sistani could offer to take some additional Sunnis onto the UIA election list that he's put together. It is rather significant that neither the names of the people on the UIA list, nor, equally crucially the order in which these names are presented has yet been published. (The same is also true, I believe, for the rest of the lists that have been registered for the election. The reason given--and not an unreasonable one-- is the security of the candidates.)

So who would know-- or more crucially, who would object?-- if Sistani and his allies were to take some substantial additional Sunni figures onto their list and place them quite near the top? And-- here's something else important-- since none of this information about the names or positions of people on the lists is required to be made public, as far as I can see, even right up to the election-- they could even pull this maneuver at any time up to the point, after the election, when the UIA's number of seats gets announced and it gets to send those people to the new Assembly.

Well, that would certainly be somethng "different" from what the Americans have had in mind till now...

By the way, I just came across this post on a blog I haven't read before, called "Iraqi Comments".

It's written by someone who signs himself, in Arabic, as "al-Khafaji" and describes himself as "an Iraqi ex patriot". (I think he means "expatriate", which means he is still patriotic but living outside the homeland, rather than declaring himself to be no longer a patriot. As he says somewhere in a recent post, English is still hard for him. It is at least his third language.) He is a student now living in the Netherlands.

Anyway, citing no evidence at all, al-Khafaji presents what he describes as the five conditions on the basis of which the Bush administration is reportedly willing to negotiate a possible delay in the Iraqi elections. The first of these (reported) conditions is,

1. The Shi'ite authority, led by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and Kurdish political leaders should announce unequivocally that they support the decision to postpone the polls. Washington does not want to antagonise its potential political allies, particularly Kurds and Shi'ites.

After listing the other conditions, al-Khafaji adds:

While there is no chance that these conditions are met by any side, the Allawi camp is urging it harder and harder day by day. He had the chance for several month to prove his abillities. By not doing so its obvious that he is not the man for the job. At least not a man to which significant part of the population will listen.

So, how are we to judge what this blogger wrote? What, at the end of the day, do we know about anyone whom we encounter in the blogosphere apart from what they disclose about themselves, which in this case is notably little. But he is probably well plugged in to all kinds of rumor mills churning away in the Iraqi expatriate community in Europe, at the very least...

And now, most recently, this, from AP's Rawya Rageh in Baghdad:

Iraq's most influential Sunni group will abandon its call for a boycott of Jan. 30 elections if the United States gives a timetable for withdrawing multinational forces, a spokesman for the group said Sunday.

Members of the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars relayed their request to a senior U.S. embassy official at a meeting Saturday, the Sunni official said on condition of anonymity...

Interesting. Lots of politicking going on. If only the folks in the Bush administration can become convinced that the best way forward in Iraq is more politics, much more politics, rather than more use of violence and bombing.

After all, if they have any kind of a learning curve at all they should have seen by now that-- far from "solving" any problems for them-- what they did in November in Fallujah has made the situation of the US forces in Iraq far, far worse.