Shiites see secular leadership for Iraq

The senior leaders of the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of mostly Shiite groups that is expected to capture the most votes in the election Sunday, have agreed that the Iraqi whom they nominate to be the country's next prime minister would be a layperson and not an Islamic cleric. The Shiite leaders say there is a similar but less formal agreement that clerics will also be excluded from running the government ministries.

"There will be no turbans in the government," said Adnan Ali, a senior leader of the Dawa Party, one of the largest Shiite parties. "Everyone agrees on that."

The decision appears to formalize the growing dominance of secular leaders among the Shiite political leadership, and it also reflects an inclination by the country's powerful religious hierarchy to stay out of the day-to-day governing of the country.

Among the Shiite coalition's 228 candidates for the National Assembly on the United Iraqi Alliance slate, fewer than half a dozen are clerics, according to the group's leaders.

The decision to exclude clerics from the government appears to mean that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric who is the chief of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the scion of a prominent religious family and an oft-mentioned candidate for prime minister, would be relegated to the background.

The five Shiites most likely to be named prime minister are well-known secular figures. Shiite leaders say their decision to move away from an Islamist government was largely shaped the fact that the Iraqi people would reject such a model. But they concede that it also reflects certain political realities: U.S. officials, who wield vast influence here, would be troubled by an overtly Islamist government. So would the Kurds, who Iraqi and U.S. officials worry might be tempted to break with the Iraqi state.
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The emerging policies appear to be a rejection of an Iranian-style theocracy. Iran has given both moral and material support to the country's two largest Shiite parties, Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The conviction that the Iranian model should be avoided in Iraq is apparently shared by Iranians.

One Iraqi Shiite leader, who recently traveled to Tehran, said he was warned by the Iranians against putting clerics in the government.

"They said it caused too many problems," the Iraqi said.

The secular tilt comes as Shiite leaders prepare for what they regard as a historic moment: After decades of official repression, the country's largest group now seems likely to take the helm of the Iraqi state. Mindful of that opportunity and of previous opportunities missed, the Shiite leaders running for office say they are determined to exercise power in a moderate way, which would include bringing Sunnis into the government and ignoring some powerful voices in their own ranks that advocate a stronger role for Islam in the new constitution.

Still, for all the expressions of unity, just how much consensus exists within the coalition is unclear, as are the prospects for the coalition's survival beyond the elections. The Shiite leaders, and the rank and file in the Iraqi electorate, represent a wide array of political visions, and these blocs could rise or fall in influence over time.

Important Shiite clerics like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani already wield considerable influence in the background, although his brand of Islam is thought to be relatively moderate. Shiite leaders like Hakim will probably continue to wield power behind the scenes; his views are thought to be more conservative.

During the drafting of the country's interim constitution last year, Hakim and others pushed for an expansive role for Islam in the new state, as well as restrictions on the rights of women.

Some Iraqis expressed concern that the more radical Shiites, notably the followers of Moktada al-Sadr, would be difficult to control once the election is over.

The challenge, the Shiite leaders say, will be in holding their coalition together after Sunday, when the jockeying for power begins in what is likely to be a coalition government.

"It was very difficult to bring the coalition together," said Ali Faisal al-Lami, a leader of Iraqi Hezbollah, a Shiite party that is part of the United Iraqi Alliance. "There is a good chance that it will fall apart."

If the alliance were to crumble, Shiite leaders fear, they could lose ground to Prime Minister Ayad Allawi or to the Kurdish parties, which are unified on a single slate and which will likely benefit from a large turnout. Already, Kurdish leaders have begun to talk up Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Patriotic Union for Kurdistan, as president, a post that would give him enormous power in shaping the composition of the new government.

The United Iraqi Alliance was pulled together under the leadership of Sistani, the country's most powerful Shiite cleric, who is a native of Iran. Sistani, without formally endorsing any political party, has issued a fatwa calling on all eligible Iraqi Shiites to go the polls.

The Shiite coalition is widely expected to pull in the largest number of votes on Election Day. Shiites make up about 60 percent of the electorate here, and if, as expected, large numbers of Iraqi Sunnis boycott the election, then Shiites could capture an even larger percentage of National Assembly seats.

The decision to exclude clerics from senior positions in the Iraqi government has set off a scramble for the post of prime minister. Under the election rules, the prime minister will be chosen by the party or group that forms a government, presumably by the group that wins the largest number of seats in the 275-member assembly.

Among the Shiites, the leading candidates for prime minister are thought to be Adil Abdul Mahdi, the Iraqi finance minister and a leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq; Ibrahim al-Jaafari, interim vice president and a leader of Dawa; Hussain al-Shahristani, a nuclear scientist; and Ahmad Chalabi, who marshaled support for the toppling of Saddam Hussein's government in the Bush administration and has since become a pariah. All are candidates for the United Iraqi Alliance.

All four candidates are secular-minded leaders who spent much of their lives in exile. They maintain that they would borrow from Islam's tenets in writing the country's constitution, the main task for the new government, but would ensure that the Iraqi state did not have a religious cast to it.

Also a contender for the prime minister's job is Allawi, the current head of the Iraqi government, who was chosen last June by the UN envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, and the U.S. leadership. Allawi, a secular-minded Shiite, is running as the leader of his own slate of candidates, the Iraqi List.

Allawi's chances to remain as prime minister are thought to depend not just on well his group does at the polls, but on how well the United Iraqi Alliance fares. If Allawi's group performs well and the Shiite coalition less well, then Allawi, Shiite leaders say, could become a leading candidate for prime minister. It was a deadlock between Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq in June that allowed Allawi to take the office.

Some prominent Iraqi Shiite religious leaders note that the Iranian regime, after taking power in 1979, marginalized and persecuted followers of the school of thought in Shiite Islam that rejects a major political role for the clergy in favor of quietism.

"It's a completely different concept of government," Shahristani said, referring to the Iraqi government. "The Iraqi government and the constitution will seek neither an Islamic government nor the participation of Islamic clerics in the government."

Sistani, though an adherent of quietism, has involved himself in every step of the political process here. Though he has stopped short of endorsing political candidates, he has come close to backing the Shiite slate. Earlier this month, some candidates in Allawi's slate protested that the use of Sistani's picture on election posters violated the ban on the use of religious symbols. Some Iraqi Shiite leaders say that Sistani will probably have to hold the coalition together after the election.

Shiite leaders agree that the biggest task facing the next Iraqi government will be mollifying the Sunnis. The Sunnis are a minority in Iraq but a majority in most of the rest of the Islamic world, outside Iran, and some of their leaders have had difficulty reconciling themselves to a subordinate role.

While Shiite leaders say they intend to reach out to Sunnis, they will have to overcome suspicion. Publicly, that suspicion is usually expressed by making allusions to Iran.

"We're not afraid of the Shia or the Kurds governing Iraq," said Sheik Moayad Brahim al-Adhami, leader of the Abu Hanifa Mosque, a Sunni bastion in Baghdad. "But what we're afraid of is a fundamentalist representing a foreign country's interests."

Edward Wong contributed reporting.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/24/news/cleric.html