Sistani down, Moqtada aggressive and up?

I read the whole of the important piece of reporting that was in The Sunday Telegraph (London) yesterday about the decline of Ayatollah Sistani’s power among Iraq’s Shiites. (Hat-tip to both Juan Cole and Pat Lang there.)
To me, the significance of what reporters Gethin Chamberlain and Aqeel Hussein write there lies not just in the strong evidence they present of a steep decline in Sistani’s power, but also, some equally strong evidence that the militia and political organization headed by Moqtada Sadr– who seems to have gained much of the popular support that Sistani has lost– has indeed turned massively towards participating in revenge killings against Sunnis.

They write:

Hundreds of thousands of people have turned away from al-Sistani to the far more aggressive al-Sadr. Sabah Ali, 22, an engineering student at Baghdad University, said that he had switched allegiance after the murder of his brother by Sunni gunmen. “I went to Sistani asking for revenge for my brother,” he said. “They said go to the police, they couldn’t do anything.
“But even if the police arrest them, they will release them for money, because the police are bad people. So I went to the al-Sadr office. I told them about the terrorists’ family. They said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get revenge for your brother’. Two days later, Sadr’s people had killed nine of the terrorists, so I felt I had revenge for my brother. I believe Sadr is the only one protecting the Shia against the terrorists.”
According to al-Sadr’s aides, he owes his success to keeping in touch with the people. “He meets his representatives every week or every day. Sistani only meets his representatives every month,” said his spokesman, Sheik Hussein al-Aboudi.
“Muqtada al-Sadr asks them what the situation is on the street, are there any fights against the Shia, he is asking all the time. So the people become close to al-Sadr because he is closer to them than Sistani. Sistani is the ayatollah, he is very expert in Islam, but not as a politician.”
Even the Iraqi army seems to have accepted that things have changed. First Lieut Jaffar al-Mayahi, an Iraqi National Guard officer, said many soldiers accepted that al-Sadr’s Mehdi army was protecting Shias. “When they go to checkpoints and their vehicles are searched, they say they are Mehdi army and they are allowed through. But if we stop Sistani’s people we sometimes arrest them and take away their weapons.”

Yes, it is certainly also important that they write this:

Aides say Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is angry and disappointed that Shias are ignoring his calls for calm and are switching their allegiance in their thousands to more militant groups which promise protection from Sunni violence and revenge for attacks.
“I will not be a political leader any more,” he told aides. “I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters.”

You can read a couple of things I wrote about Sistani back in January 2004, here and here. I note that this is not the first time that Sistani has made a demonstrative turn away from intervention in political matters.
I only have time to add a couple of quick further notes here. One is that if Sistani’s political stock in Iraq has indeed been plummeting, then the mullahs in Teheran may indeed be quite happy about this, given that he espouses a view of the role of the Islamic jurisprudent in politics that is very different to, indeed antithetical to, their own. Perhaps therefore we can see here the Iranians playing the same kind of nefarious, destabilizing game among the many different factions in Iraq that the Syrians played for many years amongst the factions in Lebanon? Broadly speaking, that was a role that sought the fissiparousness (splitting) of the factions into as many small grouplets as possible, all the better to turn them against each, keep them perpetually off-balance, and thereby retain one’s own role as “the essential balancer.”
Of course, you can also see this role being played inside Iraq by the US. The poor bloody Iraqis, if they are now having this horrible game played on them by both the Americans and the Iranians…
Another thing I want to note is that our old “friend” (irony alert there!) Adel Abdul-Mahdi has been in Washington. Pro-administration WaPo columnist Jackson Diehl writes coyly today, “Mahdi is now Iraq’s vice president, but he called his meetings with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and key senators and congressmen a ‘private visit.'”
Diehl seemed not to have read the Telegraph report of Sistani having announced his retirement from politics, and seemed to take at face value– which I don’t– Abdul-Mahdi’s claim to be acting “on Sistani’s behalf.”
Diehl wrote:

Sistani’s message to Bush, Mahdi told a group of reporters I joined last week, was that “Iraqis are sticking to the principles of the constitution and democracy.” But the ayatollah wanted to know if the United States is still on board as well.
“It’s a critical moment. We want to be sure that we understand perfectly what’s going on, and what is the real strategy of the United States in Iraq,” Mahdi said. “We read in the press about different perspectives and attitudes. That’s why we want to be clear — whether there is a Plan B.”
Mahdi said he got Bush’s commitment to stand by the government…
Mahdi, Sistani and other Shiite leaders in the government don’t share Washington’s perception of a downward spiral. (!) They also don’t buy the American sense of urgency — the oft-expressed idea that the new government has only a few months to succeed. Consequently, the many ideas for silver bullets tossed around in the U.S. debate mostly don’t interest them.
You could see this in the conversation I joined at Mahdi’s suite at the Ritz Carlton hotel. We journalists peppered him with questions about why the formation of a unity government had failed to reduce the violence. We asked about all the options usually talked about in Washington — from a rewrite of the constitution to a partition of the country; from an international conference to the dispatch of more U.S. troops.
For the most part, our queries were politely and somewhat laconically dismissed. Iraq is not in a civil war, Mahdi said, and doesn’t need more U.S. troops. It has a constitution and elected government, and thus there is no need for an international conference. As for constitutional reform, the Shiite and Kurd parties that wrote the charter last year are waiting for proposals from Sunni dissidents. Mahdi added: “So far we have heard nothing.”
So what is the solution? “Time — that is it,” Mahdi replied. “A nation like Iraq needs time. The elections for a permanent government happened eight months ago. We have been in office a few weeks. The people who we have in office have never governed. These people come from oppression and a bad political system. We can’t import ministers to Iraq. There will be many mistakes. The Americans made many mistakes, and Iraqis had to support that.”
“Our options as Iraqis are that we don’t have an exit strategy or any withdrawal timetable,” Mahdi said, somewhat bitterly. “We simply go on. . . . It is a process, and brick by brick we are working on it.”

Now, obviously, I wasn’t in the little gathering in the Ritz Carlton, so I don’t know what Abdul-Mahdi actually said. But what Diehl seems to be implying Abdul-Mahdi said– and possibly on behalf of Sistani?– is that the Iraqis are not currently seeking a speedy US withdrawal…
Anyway, in my view Adel Abdul-Mahdi is just a footnote at this point. The much more serious news has to do with the killing and violence that continue to rock many of the ethnic-Arab areas of Iraq, and with Sistani’s reported decision to (once again) pull out from active involvement in politics…
Be worried for Iraqis. Very worried indeed.