Sistani had read some Western political science in translation, and adopted into his reading of Islamic law Jean-Jacques Rousseau's principle that the only legitimate government is one that "derives from the will of the people." He wrote in November that the council-based method of election "does not guarantee the formation of an assembly that truly represents the Iraqi people. It must be changed to another process that would so guarantee, that is, to [direct] elections. In this way, the parliament would spring from the will of the Iraqis and would represent them in a just manner and would prevent any diminution of Islamic law."
Sistani mattered, as Bremer had already discovered to his dismay. In the Shiite Muslim system, each believer is expected to choose a great cleric and to follow implicitly his rulings on disputed matters in Islamic law. The more learned and upright the cleric is perceived to be, the greater authority he tends to have.
As the leading scholar of Islamic law in the holy city of Najaf, Sistani is the cleric most widely respected and obeyed (the technical term is "emulated") by Iraqi Shiites. His authority extends beyond Iraq, as well, to Lebanon, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. Sistani came to Najaf from Iran in 1952, and spent years studying with the great scholars of Najaf, rising to become one of a handful of grand ayatollahs by the 1980s. In 1992, the mantle of "Object of Emulation" or most-respected religious jurisprudent, fell on his shoulders.
Under Saddam, Sistani was under constant threat of execution, and he tended to stay quiet and to avoid conflict with the regime. He also was at odds with Ayatollah Khomeini and the clerical leaders of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, since he rejected Khomeini's doctrine that clerics must rule society. Sistani believes that clerics should stay out of day-to-day government, but should intervene in social matters with their rulings or fatwas. These are legally non-binding, but exercise great moral authority, rather like papal encyclicals for believing Catholics.
Bremer responded to Sistani's demands in two ways. He immediately gave in to the insistence that the interim constitution recognize Islam as the religion of state, attempting to neutralize that hot-button issue. But on the issue of direct elections, he succeeded in convincing even Shiites like Ahmad Chalabi on the Interim Governing Council to vote against the grand ayatollah. Bremer held that without voting rolls or voting laws, elections were not possible.
Sistani would not be put off. He demanded that United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan become involved, by sending a commission to Iraq that would investigate the situation and certify whether direct elections were possible. The Bush administration had long attempted to keep the U.N. out of decision-making on Iraq. When the members of the Interim Governing Council warmed to the idea of meeting with Annan on the issue, the Americans were reportedly "extremely offended."
By setting a fixed date, June 30, for the end of their rule, the Americans and the Coalition had made themselves lame ducks. They had also set in motion a scramble for power among the major Iraqi leaders. In late December, two sets of politicians on the Interim Governing Council made their move.
Shiite cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and a member of the Interim Governing Council scheduled a vote at the interim council on the issue of personal status law. Al-Hakim wanted to abolish the 1959 civil code that governs marriage, divorce, inheritance and other such issues and go back to religious law. He held the vote when two women members of the IGC were absent, and it passed 11 to 10.
The new law was highly controversial, especially among women. Most Muslim clerics interpret Islamic personal status law in ways that make women unequal to men. In Iran, a woman receives only half the inheritance that her brother does. Her testimony in court is worth half that of a man (making it impossible for her to convict her own rapist if she has no witnesses). She is not owed alimony on being divorced. A man can take up to four wives, and, in Shiite Islam, can have temporary wives with whom he signs a contract. Women's groups took to the streets in protest, and the only female minister appointed by the IGC, Nasrin Barwari, joined the demonstrations.
In the meantime, the two major Kurdish leaders made their play. Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani had battled shoulder-to-shoulder against Saddam, but occasionally had also fought one another. Kurds probably make up around 15 percent of Iraqis, with a current population of nearly 4 million, and they predominate in the far northeast of the country. The Kurds have run their own mini-government in the north since the early 1990s, when the U.S. established its no-fly zone.
Barzani and Talabani announced that they would form a unified provincial government of the Kurdistan region, and that they sought the addition to their territory of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and other regions with substantial Kurdish populations. Kurds marched in favor of the plan, carrying their firearms.
Arabs and Turkmen in Kirkuk organized counter-demonstrations, but were told by the largely Kurdish police that they had to disarm. Turkmen, a Turkic-speaking people close to a million strong, predominated in Kirkuk traditionally. Oil-driven urbanization in the north, combined with Saddam's expulsion of Kurds and his policy of relocating hundreds of thousands of Arabs to the north, left the city of 900,000 evenly divided among Turkmen, Arabs and Kurds.
When Arabs demonstrated against the annexation of the city to the planned Kurdish canton, they came into armed conflict with the largely Kurdish police. Later in January, Coalition authorities arrested a high Kurdish official whom they charged with ordering peshmergas to shoot at protesting Arabs and Turkmen.
As if the Kirkuk situation were not sufficiently complicated by ethnic divisions, religion also enters into the disputes. A significant proportion of Turkmen belong to the Shiite branch of Islam, and some follow the radical young cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr. Some of the transplanted Arabs in the city are also Shiite. Al-Sadr preached against annexation of Kirkuk by the Kurds, and denounced Kurdish plans for semi-autonomy. He is said to have sent fighters up to Kirkuk to help the Shiites there. The Kurds have many more trained fighters than the other communities, and their decade-old experiment in self-rule made them politically savvy, so that they seem confident they can meet these challenges from smaller ethnic groups in the north.
In mid-February, the Kurdish regional government presented a blueprint to Baghdad that laid out its aspirations. They want a provincial national guard, which will absorb the Kurdish guerrillas or peshmergas. They declaim, "Except for the Iraqi Kurdistan National Guard ... the Armed Forces of Iraq shall not enter the territory of the Kurdistan Region without the consent of the Kurdistan National Assembly." The latter is not a demand to which any sovereign government could accede, but the Kurds harbor deep bitterness about the history of Baghdad's military interventions in their territory.
Next page: Is it possible to come back from the brink of chaos?