One of Ours

When I got up this morning, my LA Times was at the door with the headline "Thousands in Fallouja Flee; Council Totters". Good thing there's no exclam after "totters," I thought, then we'd really be in trouble... at which point I tossed aside the newspaper without reading it and turned on the computer for the Iraqi blogs. After all, why get my news from people who a. don't speak Arabic, b. don't really know the country and c. have gleaned most of their information from official sources like the military and government spokespeople and are naturally skeptical of them (I would be too, but so what?)?

My first stop was the blog Iraq the Model, where I have gone often in recent days. Do I know who they are and what their biases are? Not really, but everyone's biased and at least the people here are knowledgeable. In any case, the person signing his name Ali today is placing the current violence in a context that is part of split in the Shia movement going back to the Seventh Century, between those who rely to some extent on God's will for power (the Sistani people) and those who take a more Maoist-barrel-of-a-gun view of God's will (the Sadir people). Taking the historical view, Ali has the most optimistic vision of the current situation. He concludes (but you should read it all for the background):

So what's good about this riot? As I said this is a very old dream that is strongly rooted to the conscience of the majority of the Shea'at. And with the freedom of speech and with the defeat of the Arab Sunni and with the support and motivation from Iran, this was bound to happen. It could've been worse if a leader with more brains and popularity than this clown carried it.

This riot should be and will be crushed sooner or later, because of the ignorance of the leadership and the lack of support of the majority of Iraqis including Shea'at which made those fanatics resort to terrorizing the people to show that they have the support of the Iraqis like their demand for a general strike which was associated with clear threats.

Another good outcome of this riot is that it showed that the influence of clerics including Sistani, is much smaller than they and their followers were claiming. I've heard it from most of the Shea'at that the whole Iraq supports Sistani and that the Americans don't dare to defy him! They really believed their illusions. Now it appears that the fatwa of Sistani didn't have any significant effect on the Americans' determination to end this riot, nor it convinced the fanatic Shea'at to stay calm. Even the GC paid no attention to him and showed readiness to use force if it is needed.

When this riot will be crushed, and it will be, Sistani and all the clerics will no longer seem as strong as they seemed before, and once they see the 'wholly' name Al-Sadir in handcuffs, they will think a million times before committing a similar stupidity in the future. Even some members of the GC with its religious, tribal and ethnic composition, proved to be short of meeting the challenge. This should clear the political field from these traditional representatives of the Iraqis and surly Iraqis in the future will be forced to search for alternatives once they realize how hypocrite, feeble and lacking their current leaderships are.

This will certainly not happen tomorrow, nor will it happen soon after crushing this riot, but certainly the results will make Iraqis aware of the fact that their leaders are actually not as smart and strong as they look, and that their religious, tribal and ethnic groups will not provide them with their needs. Once that happen they will start to reconsider their goals and their loyalty and the voice of reason, logic will certainly be more heard once the horns of ignorance get silenced or ignored by the majority.