By Gong Shaopeng
The golden dome of the Askariyayn Mosque in Samarra, the holy
site of Iraq's Shi'ite Muslims, went crashing down amidst a
powerful blast on Wednesday last week. The event has pushed Iraq,
which is already torn by political tumults and armed insurgency, to
the brink of civil war.
The Shi'ite sect of Islam took form revolving around the nucleus
of the clan of Ali, Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law.
Ali was revered as Imam and there were altogether 12 Imams who
enjoyed the same supreme religious position as the Prophet. Making
pilgrimage to the Imams' mausoleums is the compulsory obligation of
the Shi'ite Muslims. The mosques which house the Imams' tombs are
to the Shi'ites what Mecca is to the Sunnis.
There are only five such mosques in the world. Apart from the
Alial-Rida Mosque in Iran's Mashhad, all the rest are in Iraq
Karbala Mosque in Najaf, Husayn in Karbala, Kazimiyyah in Baghdad
and Askariyayn in Samarra.
In Askariyayn is buried Alial-Hade, the 10th Imam and Hassan,
the 11th.
The devastation of the Askariyayn Mosque angered the Shi'ites
tremendously. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme religious
leader of the Shi'ite Muslims, went on television, calling on the
Shi'ite masses to stage peaceful demonstrations against the evil
assault on the Askariyayn Mosque.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, prime minister of the Iraqi interim
government, who had been nominated to organize a new cabinet,
declared a three-day national mourning. Sunni and Kurd leaders also
condemned the assault. Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, Iraqi national security
adviser, pointed his finger at al-Qaida.
Despite the fact that both Sistani and Jaafari urged calm and
restraint, massive sectarian and ethnic strife broke out, touched
off by attacks on Sunni mosques. Several hundred people have
perished in the bloody clashes. The media sounded the alarm: Iraq
is now on the brink of civil war.
The tragedy, to a certain extent, is related to the forming of a
permanent government in Iraq, which will take place shortly.
The results of the parliamentary elections, which were held on
December 15, 2005, came out on February 10.
The United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shi'ites won 128 seats
in the 275-seat parliament while the two Sunni groups Iraqi
Accordance Front and the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue obtained
44 and 11 seats respectively. The Kurdish coalition got 53 seats
and the secular Iraqi National List Party, headed by former premier
Ayad Allawi, secured 25. The remaining 14 seats were shared by
small political parties and independent candidates.
The parliament seats are roughly distributed among the Shi'ites,
Sunnis and Kurds by the ratio of 3:1:1, which basically accords
with the three groups' population proportion in the country's
general populace.
Although the United Iraqi Alliance is the largest party in the
parliament and is, therefore, entitled to name its prime
ministerial candidate, who is supposed to form the new cabinet, its
parliament seats are just shy of a 50 per cent majority. Therefore,
it has to form a coalition government with other parties. Judging
from the parliament seat ratio between the major groups and
dictated by the necessity of reality, it is ideal to form a
national unity government.
On February 12, Jaafari, as the candidate of the Dawa Party,
beat Adil Abdel Mahdi, the candidate representing the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution, by 64 to 63 votes in the
elections staged inside the United Iraqi Alliance. He was therefore
delegated the power to form the cabinet as the new prime minister.
It was said that Zalmay Khalilzad, US ambassador to Iraq, suggested
that on February 20 all parities involved begin making preparations
for negotiations aimed at establishing a national unity
government.
In forming such a new cabinet, Jaafari is presented with two
hard nuts to crack: constitution revision and power sharing.
Both of the Sunni groups push for the revision of the article in
the constitution that deprived Saddam Hussein's Baath Party of
political rights.
Influent Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, however, demands that
the high-grade autonomy granted to the Kurds by the constitution be
invalidated. Former prime minister Allawi says that the portfolios
of defence and internal affairs should be given to independent
personnel instead of Shi'ites.
Jalal Talabani, Kurdish leader and also president of the interim
government, threatens that the Kurdish coalition would not join the
new government if Allawi's secular Iraqi National List is shut out
of the new cabinet.
After the Askariyayn incident and occurrance of sectarian
strife, the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front declared that it would
pull out of the negotiations on forming a national unity government
because some Shi'ite leaders had poured oil on the fire of the
clashes.
The Askariyayn blast was by no means an isolated and accidental
event. Paul Bremer, the former supreme US civilian executive in
Iraq, ordered the disbanding of all Iraqi troops and police
departments of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, before the war
had died down. As a result, arms became available, fuelling the
insurgency. Iraq's security situation was therefore robbed of
overall management power.
In addition, the post-war Iraqi economy was a shambles, with its
vitality recovering extremely slowly, and the country was in
desperate need of capital. The organization of new Iraqi troops and
police forces is on a painfully slow track. All this has only
contributed to the chronically deteriorating security situation in
the country.
In today's Iraq, people seem to start at the mere rustle of the
leaves. The Askariyayn incident signifies that the security
situation in the country is going from bad to worse.
The mosque incident is a crisis, which has not only placed the
country within a whisker of civil war but has also disrupted the
process of setting up a national government.
But just as an old Chinese saying goes: "Misfortune may be good
luck in disguise," the crisis, if handled properly, could be turned
into a good opportunity for establishing a new government which
exercises effective administration of the country.
All parties in Iraq maintain that Iraq should be administrated
by Iraqis. But fulfillment of this goal requires that favorable
environs be first created, free of sectarian divides. Only when all
the parties representing different religious and ethnic groups
participate in the administration of the country, can a win-win
situation be brought about.
In the current crisis, all parties and all ethnic groups are
losers. It is therefore imperative that leaders of all sects
discard their hostility and rein in their subordinates from
committing any excessive acts. They should also sit down at the
negotiating table, and try to defuse the crisis and stabilize the
situation. All this will help bring about a national unity
government with universal participation, and lead the suffering
country out of chaos and into prosperity.
The author is a professor from the China
Foreign Affair University.
(China Daily February 27, 2006)
