Robert Fisk on the Events in Najaf

Unless the White House abandons its fantasies, civil
war will consume the Iraqi nation

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Robert Fisk

30 August 2003

In Iraq, they go for the jugular: two weeks ago, the
UN’s top man, yesterday one of the most influential
Shia Muslim clerics. As they used to say in the
Lebanese war, if enough people want you dead, you’ll
die.

So who wanted Ayatollah Mohamed Bakr al-Hakim dead? Or,
more to the point, who would not care if he died? Well,
yes, there’s the famous "Saddam remnants" which the al-
Hakim family are already blaming for the Najaf
massacre. He was tortured by Saddam’s men and, after
al-Hakim had gone into his Iranian exile, Saddam
executed one of his relatives each year in a vain
attempt to get him to come back. Then there’s the
Kuwaitis or the Saudis who certainly don’t want his
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to
achieve any kind of "Islamic revolution" north of their
border.

There are neo-conservatives aplenty in the United
States who would never have trusted al-Hakim, despite
his connections to the Iraqi Interim Council that the
Americans run in Baghdad. Then there’s the Shias.
Only a couple of months ago, I remember listening to
al-Hakim preaching at Friday prayers, demanding an end
to the Anglo-American occupation but speaking of peace
and demanding even that women should join the new Iraqi
army. "Don’t think we all support this man," a
worshipper said to me.

Al-Hakim also had a bad reputation for shopping his
erstwhile Iraqi colleagues to Iranian intelligence.
Then there’s Muqtada Sadr, the young - and much less
learned - cleric whose martyred father has given him a
cloak of heroism among younger Shias and who has long
condemned "collaboration" with the American occupiers
of Iraq; less well-known is his own organisation’s
quiet collaboration with Saddam’s regime before the
Anglo-American invasion.

Deeper than this singular dispute run the angry rivers
of theological debate in the seminaries of Najaf, which
never accepted the idea of velayat faqi - theological
rule - espoused by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. Al-Hakim
had called Khomeini, and his successor Ayatollah
Khamanei, the "living Imam". Al-Hakim also compared
himself to the martyred imams Ali and Hussein, whose
family had also been killed during the first years of
Muslim history. This was a trite, even faintly
sacrilegious way of garnering support.

The people of Najaf, for the most part, don’t believe
in "living Imams" of this kind. But in the end, the
bloodbath at Najaf - and the murder of Mohamed al-Hakim
– will be seen for what it is: yet further proof that
the Americans cannot, or will not, control Iraq.
General Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq, said
only 24 hours earlier that he needed no more troops.
Clearly, he does if he wishes to stop the appalling
violence.

For what is happening, in the Sunni heartland
around Baghdad and now in the burgeoning Shia nation to
the south, is not just the back-draft of an invasion or
even a growing guerrilla war against occupation. It is
the start of a civil war in Iraq that will consume the
entire nation if its new rulers do not abandon their
neo-conservative fantasies and implore the world to
share the future of the country with them.

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd