SCIRI’s political changes; Iraqi nationalism surging; etc

Juan Cole, IraqSlogger, and various other quick-off-the-mark interpreters of Iraqi political developments have made quite a big deal out of the political transformations that the group formerly known as SCIRI (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) made at its national party meeting on Thursday and Friday.
For starters, it seems the revolution is over. Henceforth SCIRI will be known as SIIC, the Suprme Iraqi Islamic Council. In addition, these sources say, SIIC will drop the group’s previous unilateral religious orientation/allegiance to Iran’s Supreme Guide, Atayatollah Khamene’i and replace that with allegiance to Iraq’s very own (and significantly religiously different) Ayatollah Sistani.
Juan says, “The changes clearly are aimed at Iraqizing the party.” A commenter on his blog post there writes– in a way that I find generally convincing– that the new name actually chosen, al-majlis al-islami al-`iraqi al-a`la, “while undoubtedly Shiite has al-a`la after iraqi, so poetically appeals to an Iraqi nationalism. al-a`la is now the last word after Iraq”
Reidar Visser, however, is more cautious in his interpretation of the changes than either Juan, IraqSlogger, or their sources have been. In a commentary issued on his website today, Reidar seems to be commenting on the actual, 49-point public statement issued after the SCIRI/SIIC meeting, rather than on “advance spin” given regarding its contents by SIIIC officials who may well have desired to put their own spin on matters, rather than that of the party as a whole.
He writes:

The 49-point press release from the conference is noteworthy for at least two reasons.
Firstly, the document represents a notable softening of tone on the question of federalism in Iraq. In 2005 and 2006, SCIRI held a high profile in advocating the establishment of a single Shiite region of nine governorates from Basra to Baghdad. This region is not mentioned in the recent press release; instead there is general praise for the idea of federalism and emphasis on the need to follow the Iraqi constitution in this question, where after all a single Shiite region is but one of several possible outcomes (and, in fact, a rather unlikely one at that, given the complicated procedures for forming a federal region). Indeed, the explicit mention in the press release of “governorates” among the building blocks of the future federal Iraq suggests that SCIRI is now moving away from the view that the entire country should necessarily become subdivided into federal regions.
This coincides with an appreciable decline of propaganda in favour of the single Shiite federal region in early 2007, and with rumours of SCIRI members having second thoughts on the wisdom of any such large-scale federal entity – not least due to popular resistance from inside the Shiite community. Instead, forces close to SCIRI have begun re-exploring the old idea of several small-scale regions south of Baghdad…
The second important point related to the press release is illustrated by the stark discrepancy between leaked information to the press by SCIRI officials prior to the publication of the document, and its actual contents on one key issue: SCIRI’s relationship with Iran generally, and with that country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in particular. Some early media reports suggested that SCIRI were about to formally renounce their ties to Khamenei, in favour of greater emphasis on the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. That sort of loud and clear renunciation would have been immensely helpful to the Iraqi political process, and, along with a more flexible position on federalism, could have helped the party emerge as a true moderating force in Iraqi politics. Accusations against SCIRI of “pro-Iranian” and “Safavid” loyalties could then have been more easily consigned to the realm of conspiracy theories.
Ultimately, however, no such clarification of the party’s role was included in SCIRI’s press release. The only mention of Sistani was in a non-committal statement that SCIRI “valued” the efforts (already construed in the Western mainstream media as a decisive “pledge”) of the higher clergy in Iraq, including Sistani. (This of course reflects the fact that SCIRI does not have a reciprocal relationship with the leading Iraqi ayatollah; they need him more than he needs them.) True, the language of the press release is admirable and politically correct as such, with a condemnation of all external meddling in Iraqi affairs. But the failure to clarify SCIRI’s relationship to Khamenei means that considerable ambiguity on this issue remains. After all, Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim (whose portrait dominated the conference room, alongside that of Sistani) is one of the few Shiite clerics in history to have made specific proposals (such as the ‘Aqidatuna booklet from the 1990s) for a greater Islamic union of Shiite countries like Iraq, Iran and Lebanon under the leadership of a single supreme leader (wali amr al-muslimin). Since 2003, SCIRI have simply toned down their pan-Islamic and pan-Shiite rhetoric, instead of elaborating an alternative framework where they explicitly could have redefined their views on the concept of a single supreme leader…
It is however interesting that the leaks prior to the publication of the SCIRI press release apparently came from SCIRI members who themselves were interested in marking some kind of break with Iran and Khamenei. This kind of desire among party members to stress their Iraqiness must have been the driving force behind some of the other points in the press release, such as the change of the name of the organisation to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (presumably SIIC). It is an anomaly of Iraqi politics that there should be no well-organised party to represent the current associated with Sistani and his moderate Iraqi nationalist Islamism. The latest statement by SCIRI does not in itself quite suffice to fill that gap, but it does serve as an interesting indication that an internal debate on issues such as Iraqi nationalism and federalism may be underway within SCIRI. And if there has in fact been a real change in SCIRI’s programme on these important issues, SCIRI would win many friends in Iraqi politics by making this public in a coherent and comprehensive fashion, for all the world to see, instead of publishing bland documents like their latest press release.

Back in early January, I wrote this post on JWN, in which I outlined what I described as the “Battle of the Narratives” being fought in Iraq. I introduced the post thus:

Weapons and armies and such things in the physical world are the tools; but what is really happening in Iraq– as in any civil war, war of insurgency, or similar lengthy inter-group conflict– is primarily a battle of narratives. What each of the parties is seeking to do, basically, is find a way to organize the widest possible coalition of followers around their particular version of “the Truth.”

At that point, the four narratives I saw as the principal contenders in the battle were:

1. The Bushists’ narrative— one that sought (at that time) to describe the battle in Iraq as one between alleged ‘moderates’ and alleged ‘extremists’;
2. The militant Sunni/Arabist narrative— that “describes the battle in Iraq as one of defending this eastern bulwark of the Arab (and Sunni) world against the looming power of the Shiites, all of whom are described in the more extreme versions of this narratives as somehow secretly either ethnically Persian or anyway controlled by Iran.”
3. The militant Shiite narrative— that “holds that the major threat to Iraq comes from the “Wahhabists”– a term that is used to describe either just the most militant of the Sunni activists or, in a more extremist version, just about all the Sunnis in Iraq;” and
4. The Iraqi nationalist narrative— that “holds, as a fundamental tenet, that the continued US occupation is the root cause of Iraq’s current woes and therefore has to end; and that, while there are many grievances between different groups inside Iraq, these can be resolved among Iraqis themselves.”

I still think that general description of the situation is helpful. That, even though in the four months since I penned that post the Bushists’ narrative has collapsed into almost complete incoherence. The main meme we’re hearing from Bush people here in the US these days is that “We have to fight the terrorists over there in Iraq otherwise we’ll have to fight them here in America.” Mohamed and Fatmeh Ordinary-Iraqi could certainly be excused for wondering why it is in their country and amidst its already deeply wounded communities that this battle has to be fought– and this even more so since life in the US has, by comparison, scarcely been dented by this battle at all.
And meantime, we’re seeing a steady draining of support from the military Shiite narrative to the Ireaqi nationalist narrative. SCIRI/SIIC’s change of posture– whether it is as extreme as Juan Cole and IraqSlogger claim, or only goes as far as Visser say– is one significant indicator of this. Moqtada Sadr has, of course, generally been the pioneer within the Shiite community of the Iraqi nationalist narrative. His people have been racking up significant political victories in the past few weeks.
In this report from Baghdad a few hours ago, AP’s Sinan Salaheddine gave several details of the new feistiness of the elected Iraqi parliament.
He wrote that earlier today (Saturday) the parliament took up the issue of the gigantic concrete walls the US military has been erecting in several areas of Baghdad, and passed by 138-to-88 in the 275-member house a resolution that explicitly opposed the erection of the barriers and called on PM al-Maliki to testify about various security issues.
This occurred,

in a raucous session that included debate on the continuing U.S. military presence in Iraq, security raids and human rights abuses. Lawmakers interrupted each other and speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhdani struggled to maintain order.
“They (security walls) don’t protect residents because these areas are shelled by mortars and Katyusha rockets. … Will they build roofs too?” said Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman. “We must build bridges between the different groups, not build walls to separate them.”
The resolution, voted on by a show of hands, passed 138-to-88 in the 275-member house. The president and his two deputies must unanimously approve the legislation for it to become law, or else it will be sent back to the house for re-examination.
Last month, al-Maliki, a Shiite, said he had ordered a halt to the construction in Azamiyah, but his aides later said he was responding to exaggerated media reports and that construction would continue.
The house was about to vote on another resolution, this time to ban American forces from Baghdad, when officials announced the house no longer had a quorum.

Oh yes, indeed, as I wrote here just a couple of days ago, those “pesky” elected Iraqi legislators seem to be edging seriously off the US reservation.