Today, the election results are in from Iraq. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani wins with almost 50% of the entire votes over all the others in Iraq. How will this play out for GW Bush and his great global plans for the Middle East? Will Middle East countries unite behind Sistani and reject or support Bush's objectives? What can you plan for the year ahead for Iraq under Sistani?


Article by Juan Cole on Sistani: Jan 30, 2005
http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/mixed-stor...ppalled-by.html

Moreover, as Swopa rightly reminds us all, the Bush administration opposed one-person, one-vote elections of this sort. First they were going to turn Iraq over to Chalabi within six months. Then Bremer was going to be MacArthur in Baghdad for years. Then on November 15, 2003, Bremer announced a plan to have council-based elections in May of 2004. The US and the UK had somehow massaged into being provincial and municipal governing councils, the members of which were pro-American. Bremer was going to restrict the electorate to this small, elite group.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani immediately gave a fatwa denouncing this plan and demanding free elections mandated by a UN Security Council resolution. Bush was reportedly "extremely offended" at these two demands and opposed Sistani. Bremer got his appointed Interim Governing Council to go along in fighting Sistani. Sistani then brought thousands of protesters into the streets in January of 2004, demanding free elections. Soon thereafter, Bush caved and gave the ayatollah everything he demanded. Except that he was apparently afraid that open, non-manipulated elections in Iraq might become a factor in the US presidential campaign, so he got the elections postponed to January 2005. This enormous delay allowed the country to fall into much worse chaos, and Sistani is still bitter that the Americans didn't hold the elections last May. The US objected that they couldn't use UN food ration cards for registration, as Sistani suggested. But in the end that is exactly what they did.
So if it had been up to Bush, Iraq would have been a soft dictatorship under Chalabi, or would have had stage-managed elections with an electorate consisting of a handful of pro-American notables. It was Sistani and the major Shiite parties that demanded free and open elections and a UNSC resolution. They did their job and got what they wanted. But the Americans have been unable to provide them the requisite security for truly aboveboard democratic elections.

As reported in the Asian Times Feb 10, 2005 it is very apparent that Bush and Sistani will clash as Iraq grows to resists BushCo and it's 'W'rong beliefs.


[Sistani believed that government should be run by politicians, not clergymen, whose duty would be to maintain law and order and to run economic affairs, day-to-day politics and foreign relations. The clergy should not become politicians, he stressed, because this would corrupt them and distort their religious message. Instead, they should limit themselves to spiritual and religious matters in which the politicians cannot pass sound judgment.]

[Even today, with US forces in Iraq, Sistani has refrained from ever criticizing the US, urging his men not to take up arms against the Americans, yet refusing to meet with any US official on Iraqi soil. He acknowledges that they are invaders, but it is not his duty to fight them out of Baghdad. He welcomed the war on Saddam, with no mandate from the United Nations, yet insisted on having UN inspectors at the elections of January 30.]

[ Sistani has a clear agenda: to achieve democracy, safeguard the rights of the Shi'ites and set up an Islam-friendly regime in Baghdad, ruled by politicians yet supervised in religious affairs by the clergy. He sees himself as Iraq's guardian and not as the political puppet master, as some accuse him of wanting to become. He has read his history correctly and remembers only too well how the Shi'ites had suffered from one Sunni-dominated regime to the next, starting off with the Ottoman sultans in the 1500s to Saddam.

He also wants them to remain devoted to Shi'ite Islam, inasmuch as they are devoted to Iraq, to remain united against everyone, the Sunnis, the Americans, the Kurds, etc. Sistani has the power today to make Iraq a democracy. It would be difficult, but the keys to success are in his hands more so than in men like former exiles Ahmad Chalabi or Iyad Allawi, the latter now premier.

The Americans must take Sistani very seriously. His cooperation in Iraq is what prevents them from striking at the Shi'ite regime in Iran, despite its nuclear program, or the Shi'ite militia of Hezbollah in Lebanon, despite its continued war with Israel. Sistani would hear nothing of both scenarios. If the Americans foolishly decide to side step him, he could unleash hell in the Fertile Crescent. He is the best ayatollah in Iraq and they have to accept that his vision of democracy for post-Saddam Iraq is very different from what they had in mind. ]