Sistani and the American-Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement
As many of you are no doubt aware, I wrote an article in Jurist on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, mentioning some of the difficulties that any agreement between the U.S. and Iraq respecting the long term presence of U.S. troops might face in the Iraq Parliament.
I ignored, mostly because I had heard nothing at the time, about the role that Iraq's clerical authorities and in particular Grand Ayatollah Sistani was going to play. Well, it seems like it's going to be a big one, and so, you heard it here first, mark the date and the time, I think getting it past Sistani is going to be the hardest part of the exercise and might well derail it, at least during the Bush presidency. No guarantee, but it's not going to be easy to get his approval, and he is demanding a right of approval.
Incredibly, from the apathy here, it STILL seems that nobody gets Sistani, or Shi'ism. One mistake that just keeps on getting made, by scholars, government officials, Arab experts, media folk and basically almost anyone who has anything to say about Iraq is to assume that the Shi'i clerical authorites of Najaf are like the Sunni clerical authorites in the Azhar. So we hear that in Iraq the Constitutional Court is going to determine what the shari'a is, and we hear that clerics don't have the influence they once did, and we hear all about Maliki and Bush signing an agreement, and no mention of Sistani. I won't get into how divorced from reality it is for anyone to think that somehow any Iraqi judge, trained in an Iraqi law school (I worked in Iraqi law schools for two years, let me assure you, it ain't primarily or even in any significant part about shari'a) is going to overrule Sistani on a point of shari'a.
But even beyond shari'a, Sistani wields huge influence. Iraqis trust him, when Shi'is say they want a state guided by shari'a, they don't mean the courts guide it, as people tell me is the case in Egypt, nobody looks to Chief Justice Midhat Mahmoud to tell them about this stuff (I know Dr. Midhat, he is a good man, his son in law is a close friend and an expert on the Iraq judiciary, but if you told HIM what keeps being said here about his role respecting shari'a, I'm pretty sure he'd laugh.)
No, what they mean is the marja'iyya steps in to fix things--political things, economic things, social things, every once in a while. Sistani, not the court, is the gate keeper and protector when it comes to shari'a (which is not to diminish the judicial role in other areas). So when Sistani steps in and says that the constitutional committee must be elected, he wins, Bremer (who wanted a caucus selection process so complicated I sat down once for three hours trying to understand it and couldn't) loses. When an interim constitution is rammed through without Sistani's approval, and current VP Adil Abdul Mahdi is there in the room, saying dudes, this provision on the veto is going to cause trouble in Najaf, and nobody listens, what does Najaf have to do with vetos in interim constitutions, the skeptics say, tell them to stick to prayers, they say, well Shi'i Islamists who want votes aren't going to sign it then when Sistani reads it, with the public, and says "huh-uh." And it all starts to unravel, until put back together, mainly by promising Sistani the final thing won't look anything like the interim one. And it doesn't.
Yet the lesson doesn't seem very deeply internalized. How do I know? Because last Friday, the person who is effectively Sistani's SPOKESMAN, Abdul Mahdi al Karbala'i, says in his Friday sermon that Iraq should not get trapped into ratifying a treaty with the United States too quickly. مغبة التسرع في ابرام الاتفاقية مع اميركا
for those who know Arabic. The Iraqis knew what that meant, when Sistani's man sends that kind of signal. They don't negotiate any more without talking to Najaf. It slows everything down, all moving at a snail's pace now.
Hard to know what the US thinks in terms of the folks on the ground, we have no idea. But really, beyond that, it seems rather a nonevent here in the US. I don't read about it, I don't hear about it, Iraq reports don't mention it. Folks, wake up, Sistani has just through this sermon effectively announced he will attend to this, with, to quote one Najaf paper, "exceptional attention", and he doesn't want to hurry.
Do people really think George Bush is going to be able to push it through the Iraq Parliament if Sistani says no? Do they think he can hurry it if Sistani wants to slow it down. A hatchet has been thrown down, this is real.
And the mere fact that people don't realize it makes me wonder how much, after all these years, the US has learned about this country.
HAH
I ignored, mostly because I had heard nothing at the time, about the role that Iraq's clerical authorities and in particular Grand Ayatollah Sistani was going to play. Well, it seems like it's going to be a big one, and so, you heard it here first, mark the date and the time, I think getting it past Sistani is going to be the hardest part of the exercise and might well derail it, at least during the Bush presidency. No guarantee, but it's not going to be easy to get his approval, and he is demanding a right of approval.
Incredibly, from the apathy here, it STILL seems that nobody gets Sistani, or Shi'ism. One mistake that just keeps on getting made, by scholars, government officials, Arab experts, media folk and basically almost anyone who has anything to say about Iraq is to assume that the Shi'i clerical authorites of Najaf are like the Sunni clerical authorites in the Azhar. So we hear that in Iraq the Constitutional Court is going to determine what the shari'a is, and we hear that clerics don't have the influence they once did, and we hear all about Maliki and Bush signing an agreement, and no mention of Sistani. I won't get into how divorced from reality it is for anyone to think that somehow any Iraqi judge, trained in an Iraqi law school (I worked in Iraqi law schools for two years, let me assure you, it ain't primarily or even in any significant part about shari'a) is going to overrule Sistani on a point of shari'a.
But even beyond shari'a, Sistani wields huge influence. Iraqis trust him, when Shi'is say they want a state guided by shari'a, they don't mean the courts guide it, as people tell me is the case in Egypt, nobody looks to Chief Justice Midhat Mahmoud to tell them about this stuff (I know Dr. Midhat, he is a good man, his son in law is a close friend and an expert on the Iraq judiciary, but if you told HIM what keeps being said here about his role respecting shari'a, I'm pretty sure he'd laugh.)
No, what they mean is the marja'iyya steps in to fix things--political things, economic things, social things, every once in a while. Sistani, not the court, is the gate keeper and protector when it comes to shari'a (which is not to diminish the judicial role in other areas). So when Sistani steps in and says that the constitutional committee must be elected, he wins, Bremer (who wanted a caucus selection process so complicated I sat down once for three hours trying to understand it and couldn't) loses. When an interim constitution is rammed through without Sistani's approval, and current VP Adil Abdul Mahdi is there in the room, saying dudes, this provision on the veto is going to cause trouble in Najaf, and nobody listens, what does Najaf have to do with vetos in interim constitutions, the skeptics say, tell them to stick to prayers, they say, well Shi'i Islamists who want votes aren't going to sign it then when Sistani reads it, with the public, and says "huh-uh." And it all starts to unravel, until put back together, mainly by promising Sistani the final thing won't look anything like the interim one. And it doesn't.
Yet the lesson doesn't seem very deeply internalized. How do I know? Because last Friday, the person who is effectively Sistani's SPOKESMAN, Abdul Mahdi al Karbala'i, says in his Friday sermon that Iraq should not get trapped into ratifying a treaty with the United States too quickly. مغبة التسرع في ابرام الاتفاقية مع اميركا
for those who know Arabic. The Iraqis knew what that meant, when Sistani's man sends that kind of signal. They don't negotiate any more without talking to Najaf. It slows everything down, all moving at a snail's pace now.
Hard to know what the US thinks in terms of the folks on the ground, we have no idea. But really, beyond that, it seems rather a nonevent here in the US. I don't read about it, I don't hear about it, Iraq reports don't mention it. Folks, wake up, Sistani has just through this sermon effectively announced he will attend to this, with, to quote one Najaf paper, "exceptional attention", and he doesn't want to hurry.
Do people really think George Bush is going to be able to push it through the Iraq Parliament if Sistani says no? Do they think he can hurry it if Sistani wants to slow it down. A hatchet has been thrown down, this is real.
And the mere fact that people don't realize it makes me wonder how much, after all these years, the US has learned about this country.
HAH
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