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Iranian back ayatollah seek leadership { May 12 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45843-2003May12.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45843-2003May12.html
Shiite Muslim Leader Returns to Iraq After Exile
Iranian-Backed Hakim May Seek Role in Future Iraqi Leadership
By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 12, 2003; 4:25 PM
NAJAF, Iraq, May 12 -- Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim, leader of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, paraded down the streets of Shiite Islam's holiest city today in a homecoming that his supporters hope will help propel him into the ranks of Iraq's postwar leadership.
Ending a 23-year exile in Iran, Hakim's return to Najaf fueled expectations that he wants to play a major role in representing Shiite Muslims, who make up 60 percent of Iraq's 24 million inhabitants but were largely frozen out by the Sunni-dominated Baath Party that ruled for three decades under the now fugitive president Saddam Hussein. With his repeated calls for a swift end to U.S. occupation, Hakim could pose a problem for the Bush administration if he gains power among a people eager for a new order now that Hussein is gone, but unsettled so far on what that order should be.
Hakim's political apparatus, long funded by Iran, shuttled in busloads of supporters from as far away as Baghdad, 100 miles north of here. Najaf was also filled with militiamen from the Supreme Council's Badr Brigade, who have been streaming back from Iran since Hussein fell. The Supreme Council gave away food and refreshments; there were free hotel rooms for visiting sheiks and dignitaries, reams of party literature and a press center for the international media. The streets were lined with pictures of Hakim's turbaned and bearded visage.
"He is a holy man, a man of the people, and he will free us from the American occupiers!" shouted Ali Hassan, a street vendor who waved a banner welcoming Hakim. Hassan said the banner was given to him by Supreme Council operatives. "But what of it," he said. "They have all the money for paint."
In a region where the battered remnants of other Shiite political parties operate out of shabby abandoned buildings without working toilets, the Supreme Council has established its Najaf headquarters in a smartly painted, air-conditioned compound. Busy aides were seen scurrying about there with satellite telephones in a parking lot filled with new Toyota sedans, confiscated from fleeing Baath officials. Supplicants crowded the gates, pressing for favors, jobs and access.
Since the fall of Najaf to U.S. forces, the Supreme Council has paid partial salaries for more than 3,000 city employees, assuring the populace that they keep the lights on, not the Americans. They have also distributed bulk food and helped poor Shiites move their dead from temporary graves to the massive Najaf cemetery, the ultimate resting place for devout Shiites.
At the gold-domed shrine here to Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad who gave rise to the Shiite branch of Islam in the 7th century, Hakim told thousands crowded into the mosque, "I am your servant."
But Hakim's ascendance was not guaranteed. Many of his opponents have described the 63-year-old cleric as a wily politician who has done little over the years to help ordinary Shiites during their troubled decades under Hussein.
Hakim fled to Tehran in 1980, at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war, and created a government in exile there dedicated to establishing an Islamic republic in Iraq. He built his Badr Brigade militia, filled with fellow exiles and deserters from the Iraqi military during the 1980-88 war. Iraqi POWs imprisoned in Iran have told the story of being visited by Badr Brigade members who offered freedom if they would renounce Hussein and fight with the Iranians.
Shiite leaders and ordinary citizens have spoken openly of their distrust of the retuning ayatollah from Iran.
"It is all propaganda, all the images of Hakim. It reminds me of Saddam Hussein," said Abdul Qatia, who spent five years in prison during the 1980s because he was a member of the Dawa, the oldest Shiite opposition party in Iraq. "It is a lot of hot air. While we fought and died, he did nothing."
Qatia and other critics said that as poor Shiites lived under repression in Iraq, particularly after the 1991 uprising that followed the Persian Gulf War, Hakim and his clique lived in wealth and ease in neighboring Iran.
"Hakim, he is one more Shiite in Najaf, nothing more, nothing less," said Ali Mearza Assadi, the head of the Dawa party here.
A few hours before Hakim's triumphant arrival, Assadi labeled Hakim's Supreme Council "a dependent party, dependent upon outsiders for their strength, for their support," referring to Iran.
The role of Iran in Iraqi Shiite affairs is complex, and Hakim's long association with Iranian theocrats is of great concern to U.S. officials hoping to forge a broad-based and democratic government in Iraq.
Iran is overwhelmingly Shiite, but most of its people are Persian and speak Farsi. Over the years, the Shiites of Iraq and Iran have been competitors and allies. The leading center of Shiite scholarship was originally in Najaf, but the city faded under Hussein as the Iranian city of Qom ascended as a capital of learning.
During his long exile from Iran, for example, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini lived in Najaf, a block away from where Hakim addressed a crowd today at the main mosque. Khomeini is still revered as a holy man in Najaf, even if his creation of an Islamic state dominated by a supreme religious leader does not appear to be widely endorsed by Shiites on the street, who say they favor an Islamic democracy. So far, the religious leaders who dominate life in Najaf, and operate the fraternity of scholars known as the Hawza, have not openly endorsed any politician to lead the Shiites.
Hakim has given mixed signals about what role he wants to play. His brother is negotiating in Baghdad with the Americans for a role for the Supreme Council in the new interim government.
Hakim sometimes stresses that he would like to be seen only as a religious leader. But that, too, is uncertain. In the house of Issac Fayadh, one of the four supreme leaders of the Hawza, one of Fayadh's followers expressed doubt whether Hakim has the knowledge and support to become a leading religious figure. "He is a politician now," said Ali Rubaii, the Fayadh representative. "Filling a political gap."
Iraq's Shiite population appears divided over the future, and the squabbling leaders, religious and secular, are struggling to transform themselves from figures living in the shadows of opposition. Three main Shiite groups have vied for political advantage: Hakim's Supreme Council, the Dawa and another group headed by Muqtada Sadr, the son of a religious leader shot to death by Hussein's followers in 1999.
A spokesman for the younger Sadr also dismissed Hakim, saying, "he has no real support, but he is clever."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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