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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Shi’ite leaders counsel patience |
| 2004-06-13 |
| via Bost Glob By Thanassis Cambanis | June 13, 2004 In quiet courtyards like this one, at the little-known shrine of Sayyed Id’rees, the most influential leaders of Shi’ite Iraq are biding their time. Haji Abbas Rida al-Zubaydi tells his working-class followers there’s no rush to join a militia, fight the Americans, or condemn Iraq’s interim government of exiles and technocrats: Shi’ite power is just within reach, he says, if people have the patience to wait another six months. In places like Sadr City and Kufa, militiamen loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr are still staging nightly ambushes from alleys and cemeteries, seemingly determined to kill as many American soldiers as they can. Yet almost two weeks after an interim government was announced, mainstream Shi’ite leaders have spread a message of patience and inevitable victory: Wait for elections, and then we’ll take power, they are telling Iraq’s Shi’ites, who account for 60 to 70 percent of the country’s 26 million people. Their counsel might provide short-term comfort to officials from the United States, the United Nations, and the interim Iraqi government whose success depends on improving security and staging peaceful national elections by January. In the long term, many Shi’ites cling to the belief that a theocratic government, run by turbaned clerics, will ultimately prevail once Iraqis are free to vote, which could someday put them at odds with many other Iraqis, as well as US policy makers, who want a secular state here. They differ with Sadr and his followers because they find his quest for power unseemly, hurried, and prematurely violent. But they don’t disagree with his vision of a Shi’ite-controlled, religiously ruled Iraq. "God willing, we will have our Shi’ite president through elections," said Zubaydi, 62, the keeper of the Shrine of Id’rees. "We are the majority. The United States has proven it does not want religious men, so we are waiting for the free elections, which we hope will get the clerics into the government." A mild-mannered man who boasts that in 30 years of marriage "I have never once beaten my wife," Zubaydi takes moderate-sounding positions on today’s political situation in Iraq, which echo last week’s pronouncement by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. ...more... Learning the game. |
| Posted by:.com |
| #3 All the more reason to ensure installation of a solidly pluralistic legislature weighted with women and Kurds. The prospect of newly-liberated Iraqis being delivered up to the tender mercies of Shiite theocracy is an outright desecration of so many American lives lost in freeing their nation. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-06-13 3:35:29 PM |
| #2 A mild-mannered man who boasts that in 30 years of marriage "I have never once beaten my wife," There you have it, the 'gold' standard for the Arab husband. |
| Posted by: Raj 2004-06-13 10:48:05 AM |
| #1 many Shi’ites cling to the belief that a theocratic government, run by turbaned clerics, will ultimately prevail once Iraqis are free to vote The turbaned clerics have to be elected first. And then re-elected to maintain power. Keep that in mind, Mr. Zubaydi. |
| Posted by: Rafael 2004-06-13 9:42:18 AM |