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Ayatollah Haeri says he has withdrawn support for Sadr
The Shiite cleric based in Iran who was the mentor of the rebel Iraqi cleric Moktada al-Sadr has in recent weeks publicly broken with Mr. Sadr and withdrawn his support. The cleric, Ayatollah Kazem al-Haeri, had once encouraged armed opposition by Mr. Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, against both Saddam Hussein and American-led forces in Iraq. But Ayatollah Haeri, who has ties to some high-level conservative clerics in Iran, began distancing himself from his protégé a year ago and is now directly appealing for peace. "I condemn the events in Iraq and advise the two groups, the interim government and Mahdi Army, to resolve their differences without the interference of others," he said in a statement after the standoff between Mr. Sadr's militia and American forces flared last month in the Iraqi city of Najaf. Ayatollah Haeri, an Iraqi who came to Qum for religious studies in 1973, had appointed Mr. Sadr to be his representative and Friday Prayer leader in the city of Kufa after the fall of Mr. Hussein. "Moktada is not his representative anymore," the ayatollah's brother, Mustafa Haeri, who is also the director of his brother's office in Qum, said late last month. On his Web site, alhaeri.org, Mr. Haeri denies supporting Mr. Sadr and says that he has stripped him of his position. The first evidence of Ayatollah Haeri's change of heart toward Mr. Sadr came in August 2003, when he told Alireza Shaker, an analyst and journalist in Tehran, that although he opposed the presence of American forces in Iraq, he was concerned over "the timing and the location" of Mr. Sadr's revolt. "He felt that his support for Mr. Sadr may tarnish his reputation in the Shiite world," Mr. Shaker said in an interview. "He wants to be able to play a role in the future of Iraq, and so wants to keep a good name for himself." Mr. Shaker said that when he had visited Ayatollah Haeri last year at his office, a group of Mr. Sadr's supporters, who had come from Iraq, were causing a commotion at his office, apparently in response to his effort to distance himself from Mr. Sadr. "You are traitor," Mr. Shaker said one Iraqi kept shouting. There is heavy security at Ayatollah Haeri's office, on a narrow alley off the main street of Qum. He cautiously drives into the backyard of the office with his bodyguard, who is a member of Iran's hard-line Revolutionary Guard, and refuses to meet with journalists. Ayatollah Haeri, 68, defected to Iran after Mr. Hussein's government began expelling Iraqis who were of Iranian origin. It is unclear whether he was born in Iran or Iraq, but his grandfather was Iranian. Ayatollah Haeri is a supporter of an Islamic state in Iraq, unlike Iraq's most revered cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who favors separation of state and religion. He favored armed opposition of Mr. Hussein, and his religious decrees were collected in a book, "The Case For Armed Opposition." Ayatollah Haeri has developed close ties with Iranian officials over the years and is a member of the board that approves the religious credentials of candidates running for the Council of Experts, which is responsible for supervising the conduct of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. During the Iran- Iraq war Ayatollah Haeri closed his school in Qum and went to fight against Iraq. He urged his students and his son to join the Iranian forces. His son, Javad, was killed in the war. Posted by: Paul Moloney 2004-09-05 |
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