Guess Who? You remember the guy we termed a thug and a murder suspect? The guy who inflamed the poor Shi'a and held off US forces in Najaf?
Yup. Him. Moqtada Al-Sadr. And it appears it will be with Sistani's agreement if not blessing.
You have to admit there is a certain poetic justice IF this happens.
This is from The New Republic and if it is correct and plays out that way, there is gonna be Shock And Awe in DC. The NeoCons will have a collective stroke. (kewl!)
I would like to see if this is supported by Juan Cole but I have not yet seen his site because I not been able to accesss it for the last two day. Anyone know what the problem is?
I welcome all opinions, updates, dissents and refutations. Bring it on.
SISTANI'S LIST: Here comes, at last, the formation of the United Iraqi Alliance, the long-awaited electoral slate of Shia candidates brokered by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani. Sistani's negotiator, Hussein Shahristani, announced the finalization of the slate yesterday. Crucially, we don't yet know what order candidates from which parties (and independents) are ranked: Those at the bottom of the 240-name slate will be less likely to take seats in the interim assembly, given that seats are determined by a slate's proportion of the vote for the 270-member parliament. (Shahristani did comment, however, that "People looking at the first few names will immediately recognize that these are people acceptable to [Sistani]"--i.e., those that are certain to take office.) Moqtada Al Sadr apparently won his fight to dominate the slate, placing 30 candidates on the ticket while his rivals in SCIRI got 25 and Da'wa got 20. We'll know for certain when the full slate is unveiled later in the week, but it would appear Sadr represents the largest Shia faction included on the ticket (even though a partnership between SCIRI and Da'wa would obviously blunt that advantage and alignment with the so-called independent candidates is anyone's guess).
As the name indicates, the Shia slate is billing itself as all-Iraqi. That won't really fly. Indeed, there are some Sunni candidates, apparently from the Shammar tribe. (That would be the tribe led by interim president Ghazi Al Yawar, who is clearly backing the ticket.) But the acceptability of Sunni candidates to a Sistani-dominated list while the Association of Muslim Scholars' boycott is on (and while nearly 150,000 U.S. troops occupy the country) is dubious, and the inclusion of them is a fig leaf. More interestingly, said to be included as well are Arab candidates from Mosul and a contingent of Turkomen--both of whom are a potential check on Kurdish ambitions, which may shed some light on why the Kurdish parties initially supported the Adnan Pachachi-led call for a six-month election delay. (Furthermore, there are also traditionally marginalized Shia Kurds on the Sistani list.)
It's not that the Shia list shouldn't include Sunni candidates. But as I argued Friday, more promising to the prospect that the Sunnis will buy into the political process and avert a civil war is what the Shia list will do when it takes power. As The Washington Post reports:
Banners fluttered recently in the brisk breeze of Baghdad's winter on the road to the twin domes of the Kadhimiya shrine, which was bustling with pilgrims and vendors selling honeyed sweets and tapes of Shiite laments. At one end of the road, banners promised a new era of stability with the vote. At the other, they cast the election as the surest way to end an occupation that has grown increasingly unpopular.
"Brother Iraqis, the future of Iraq is in your hands. Elections are the ideal way to expel the occupier from Iraq," one white banner proclaimed. "Brother Iraqi, your vote in the elections is better than a bullet in battle," an adjacent sign read