The Shiite Schisms

By Kamran Bokhari

Highly anticipated public talks between the
United States and Iran over the future of Iraq have been lagging behind
schedule, while the rhetorical exchanges between Tehran and Washington over
Iran's nuclear program have been gaining volume. To our minds, the
escalation on the nuclear issue -- which can be viewed as a lever rather
than an end in itself for Tehran -- is a sign that a deal might be in the
making in other channels. But there is a sticking point that must be
resolved before public talks can take place, and that is the political
impasse that has delayed the formation of a permanent government in
Baghdad.

Despite the fact that Iraq's national election results were
finalized nearly three months ago, there has been no agreement on the
selection of a new prime minister. The interim prime minister, Ibrahim
Jaafari, has been nominated to return to that position, but his nomination
has been vehemently opposed by other political parties and even Shiite
factions within his own United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) coalition. The
situation, which appears to be worsening by the day, is born partly from
serious disagreements among the four major blocs in parliament; perhaps even
more significantly, it stems from schisms within Iraq's majority Shiite
community.

Those schisms for some time have been exploited by
others. The United States and Iran, of course, are the most critical players
at the table, and the Iraqi Shia have been integral to the
strategies of both. Thus far, Washington and Tehran have been exploiting
the internal differences of the ethnic majority in order to secure their own
interests in Iraq. However, managing the Shia has become a tremendous
challenge for both Washington and Tehran, who now need to help repair the
rifts in order to move toward their own larger goals in the region.


In short, understanding Iraq's Shiite factions -- and the interplay
between them -- is critical to understanding Iran's future course and its
implications for the region.

A Fractured Community

The
Shia are acutely aware of their own divisions and the risk to their
political power within Iraq. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani -- the most important
religious leader for the Iraqi Shia -- has said that the unity of the Shiite
political alliance must be upheld at all costs.

Al-Sistani's
political influence has its limits, but it is not
inconsiderable.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraq's
Shiite community has been held together by three forces: the dominant
political trend of Islamism, the clerical establishment based in An Najaf,
and Iran, which has varying degrees of influence with nearly every
significant Shiite leader or group. Together, these three forces have
prevented the rise of a viable secular political group among the Shia.


Thus, when what is now the main Shiite political coalition -- the
UIA -- was formed, it was put together with the blessings of the religious
establishment, which is led by al-Sistani. The UIA is an Islamist-leaning
political bloc, but beyond that common thread, it would be difficult to
refer to the coalition as "united." There are significant tensions and
rivalries between each of its three main components -- Hizb al-Dawah (HD),
the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Muqtada
al-Sadr's movement. All three groups are offshoots of the original Hizb
al-Dawah, which was founded in the 1950s by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr -- a
leading Shiite Islamist ideologue and the uncle of Muqtada
al-Sadr.



The
al-Sadrites are a fairly new addition to the UIA. When he first emerged on
the political scene, Muqtada al-Sadr was widely regarded as an upstart.
However, given his family connections -- not only was his uncle well-known,
but his father was a grand ayatollah who was killed by agents of Saddam
Hussein -- he has been able to build a large following among the poorer
Shiite classes.

That following became important to the UIA during
the campaign season leading up to Iraq's Dec. 15 vote. The alliance already
had been weakened by disappointment with Jaafari's political leadership and
the departure of several groups, including a faction led by secular figure
Ahmed Chalabi and a part of Iraqi Hezbollah. Moreover, with Sunni parties
agreeing to participate in the election, the UIA knew it would need the
votes of al-Sadr's followers in order to maintain its parliamentary
majority. Thus, the "upstart" leader joined the ruling coalition -- and it
has been a marriage of strange bedfellows indeed.

For one thing, the
al-Sadrites have never gotten along well with SCIRI, which is led by Abdel
Aziz al-Hakim (currently the president of the UIA). SCIRI was founded in
Tehran in 1982 by Shiite exiles from Iraq who wanted to install an Islamist
regime in Baghdad. It is still viewed as the Iraqi Shiite group with the
closest political ties to Tehran. Both SCIRI and the al-Sadr movement have
militias of their own -- the Badr Organization and the Mehdi Army -- and
their clashes between April 2003 and late 2005 were what helped to clinch
the prime ministerial nomination for
the controversial Jaafari.

Jaafari's HD party is divided as well, into
two factions. The main grouping has been led by Jaafari since his
predecessor, Izz al-Deen Saleem, was killed by suicide bombers in May 2004.
This faction spent time in exile in Europe and Syria. A smaller faction,
known as Hizb al-Dawah-Tandheem al-Iraq, splintered from the main party in
the 1980s. It has been more closely aligned with Tehran and was based in
Iran during the period of exile.

Although these three groups are the
primary players within the UIA, there also are several independents who are
influential. These include Hussein Shahristani, a former nuclear physicist
who is deputy speaker in the interim parliament. Shahristani is believed to
be al-Sistani's most trusted political ally. Another key player is Muwaffaq
al-Rubaie, who serves as national security adviser under the current interim
government -- a position he also held under the previous Coalition
Provisional Authority.

The Trouble With Jaafari

Were
it not for political needs and pragmatic opportunism, it would be difficult
to understand how such a diverse grouping ever could agree on their
leadership under a united political banner. Needless to say, that process --
for the interim government that took power in spring 2005 -- was a
hard-fought battle. Ultimately, the competition was between Jaafari and
Chalabi, with the latter withdrawing his nomination under pressure from
senior alliance members.

Jaafari won out and served one term as
interim prime minister. However, by the time national elections to install a
permanent government in Baghdad were held in December 2005, public opinion of
Jaafari's administration had soured among all of Iraq's ethnic groups and in
Washington, for various reasons. That has led to serious infighting in the
UIA since the beginning of this year -- and the fissures have only widened
in recent weeks as the Bush administration, the Sunnis, the Kurds and the
secular nationalists have played their hands.

After weeks of
deliberation designed to build consensus on a prime minister nominee, the
matter went to a vote. Deputies from the alliance's member parties had to
choose between Jaafari and Adel Abdel-Mahdi, a senior leader of SCIRI.
Jaafari got the nomination by one vote, but the widespread opposition to his
leadership has led to calls, even within the UIA, for his nomination to be
scrapped in favor of another candidate, and several names have been floated.
Jaafari, of course, has refused to relinquish his position and he still has
the backing of some political allies -- even though another HD member, Ali
al-Adeeb, recently has been suggested as a replacement.

The UIA's
leadership must proceed carefully on this matter. Recognizing that too much
pressure against Jaafari could lead to the collapse of the Shiite alliance,
they have sought out al-Sistani -- who, again, is one of the few unifying
forces for the Iraqi Shiite community. The ayatollah has urged the Shiite
factions to sort out their differences but has refrained from endorsing
Jaafari or any alternative candidates.

The Shia have not yet found a
solution to the Jaafari problem, but they have bought some time through a
neat political maneuver. The UIA has made any agreement on its part to
nominate another candidate as prime minister contingent upon a deal to
revisit choices for other coveted posts: president, vice-president, speaker
of parliament, interior, defense, and oil ministries. They also have tried
to mitigate the pressure on the UIA by finding fault with a Sunni, Tariq
al-Hashmi, who was nominated as speaker of parliament. And there have been
attempts to create a National Security Council as a power-sharing mechanism.


But as yet, there is no end to the political infighting in sight.


The Influence of al-Sistani

The fact that all the
parties within the Shiite bloc have sought al-Sistani's assistance
underscores the political influence of the grand ayatollah -- perhaps more
so than the religious establishment as a whole.

There are three
other grand ayatollahs in Iraq: Muhammad Fayyad, an Afghan; Hussein Bashir
al-Najafi, from Pakistan; and Muhammad Said al-Hakim, an Iraqi. These three
men are all of equal stature. Al-Sistani outranks them all, and the Shiite
political factions are increasingly dependent upon him in the role of
kingmaker.

But it is important to note that neither al-Sistani's
interests, nor those of the Iraqi Shia as a whole, are synonymous with those
of their religious brethren in Tehran.

The clerical establishments in
Iraq and Iran certainly have common ties; Al-Sistani, for example, was born
in Iran, and Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini -- founder of the Islamic regime in
Tehran -- studied at the seminary in An Najaf. But there is a significant
rivalry within the Shiite world as well, characterized by the Najaf and Qom
schools of thought. The Najaf school -- so called after the Iraqi city that
has been a major religious center since the Shiite sect emerged in the early
8th century -- adheres to a "quietist" approach in politics, meaning that the
ulema do not hold office directly but exercise a great deal of influence and
oversight in governance. The Qom school -- named after the Iranian religious
center, which gained prominence in the early 16th century after the rise of
the Safavid Empire -- has favored a direct role for the ulema in politics.


Thus, the Iranian regime -- heirs of Khomeini and the Qom school --
has its differences with al-Sistani, who follows the quietist approach of
the Najaf factions. Those differences also can be seen, in varying degrees,
with Iraqi groups strongly influenced by Iran.

For the time being,
al-Sistani still is able to exert influence as a spiritual leader to help
bind the various Shiite factions together. But given his age (76), previous
threats to his life and other factors, one must consider what it would mean
if he were to die or become incapacitated.

There certainly could be
opportunities for some Shiite groups in Iraq if al-Sistani were to leave a
power vacuum. The al-Sadrites, for example, harbor no great love for the
cleric for numerous reasons, including personal histories: The Hussein
regime tolerated al-Sistani and his quietist approach but tortured and
killed al-Sadr's father (rival cleric Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq
al-Sadr) and several of his brothers in the late 1990s. Moreover, the
departure of the powerful grand ayatollah could allow figures like al-Sadr,
who is not a cleric, to gain more personal clout. SCIRI, too -- as a
creation of the Iranians -- has found al-Sistani's influence as a limitation
to its own power.

That said, these factions -- and outside players
like the United States and Iran -- still need him, for the time being, to
bring what cohesion he can to the Shiite community.

The United
States is not overly concerned with the unity of the Shia per se, but the
Bush administration certainly would oppose any political moves that would
bring further disintegration to the Shiite bloc and potentially derail the
political process, which is critical to plans for a military drawdown and --
of course -- to public talks with Iran. Tehran, which has degrees of leverage
with practically all of the Iraqi Shiite factions, likely could tolerate any
candidate put forward as prime minister by the Shiite bloc. On the other
hand, it doesn't want the UIA alliance to collapse, since that would
translate into an aggregate loss of influence for Tehran in Iraq.

The
paradox by now should be clear: Most of the players -- both within Iraq and
in the region -- view a robust and united Shiite majority as a threat to
their interests, but the divisions among the Shia have reached such a
critical juncture that there are very real concerns about the overall level
of stability in the country. The one thing that everyone can agree on is
that achieving a balance somewhere in the middle would be the best outcome.
And this is nothing short of a Herculean task, given the political
landscape.

The two chief actors, as we have stated previously, are
Iran and the United States. And while they agree on the need for a certain
level of stability, they differ in their views of just how cohesive the
Iraqi Shia should be. Washington wants a sectarian faction that hangs
together well enough to act as a counterbalance to the Sunnis, Kurds and
other factions and to contain the jihadists. Tehran, of course, wants as
strong a Shiite community as possible -- and, ideally, a government in
Baghdad that will allow Iran to catapult to regional hegemony.

The
current deadlock over Jaafari and the prime ministership eventually will be
resolved, but the structural reality among the Shia is not likely to change.
The internal divisions within Iraq's majority community will continue to be
significant -- in Baghdad and far beyond -- for quite some time to come.

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