Nearly all the media commentary up till now, about the inflammatory statement that SCIRI leader Abdul-Aziz Hakim made Wednesday about the present text of the Constitution being untouchable, has referred to Hakim as incontestably the most powerful individual within the big Shiite electoral coalition, the UIA– and therefore, within all of Iraq. E.g. this news article: “THE most influential politician in Iraq”, as cited uncritically by Juan Cole. Other examples abound in both the MSM and blogosphere…
But why do all these people buy this assumption so uncricitically? It is heavily promoted, of course, by Hakim and his SCIRI supporters themselves…
I noted in several JWN posts between Dec. 20 and Jan. 1 that Hakim’s predominance inside the UIA was by no means a done deal. (See here, here, here, and here.)
I’ve seen no news reports or other evidence since that last post that change the conclusion I expressed there, namely that:
- the outcome of the intra-UIA power struggle will be very important for the course Iraq takes over the coming months and years. Thus far, I see the two poles of the main struggle being occupied by Hakim and Sadr, with the current PM, Ibrahim Jaafari straddling somewhere between them.
I think, before anyone goes running around blithely describing Hakim as “the most influential politican in Iraq” or whatever, they should actually present the evidence on which they base this conclusion? And also give due consideration to the counter-evidence that is out there. Otherwise, they’re just acting as shills for Hakim.
Well, Hakim is SCIRI leader, ideologically, he is a Shiite radical. For this reason, Hakim must be pretty hostile towards neo-Baathists and Salafists. This can explain his bickering with Sunnis on constitutional issues.
:-)))
Helena, let me thank you for hitting on the same thing I have just written about over at http://www.aliveinbaghdad.org:
http://www.aliveinbaghdad.org/aib/?p=3108
This false strength placed in Hakim is a huge problem. By continuing to parrot the mistaken/misdirected civil war metaphor, the media helps to absolve the United States and Coalition forces of responsibility for the current state of affairs in Iraq.
This is fascinating. I don’t claim to have the faintest idea who is the pre-eminent politician in Iraq, but you are enacting here exactly what I just raised in a blog post about where we look to find authority for information. I will be following this discussion here with great interest.
I think it is very important to maintain a critical perspective on Hakim, and to ask questions about his real level of support. My guess is that his federal scheme received so much attention in the Western mainstream media mainly because it struck the right chord among those who prefer a simplistic and Balkans-inspired Shiite/Sunni/Kurd paradigm for Iraqi politics. Finally, it became possible to construe the image of a single, unified Shiite community with one vision and one leader – instead of all that burdensome and time-consuming Iraqi complexity.
To the United Iraqi Alliance discussion, I should add that I have completed the analysis of party affiliations within the UIA for the 110 or so seats that seem secure, and that the patterns of SCIRI remaining at under 20% is confirmed also when Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala are included. What is more difficult to predict though is the struggle over the 45 compensatory seats. According to some estimates, the UIA could get around 20 of these, but the process of internal distribution is as far as I understand based entirely on lists submitted by the coalition leadership and so the SCIRI elites may perhaps manage to reassert themselves to some extent. So I assume that any conclusion must await the final result.