A funny thing is that neither Doug nor Proyect knows anything about Iran, but they have a firm opinion about what it is and what attitude all leftists should take (as if our opinions mattered); and that neither Doug nor Proyect would be interested in domestic politics of Iran but for my interest in it.
But their jiahds are not the first jihads against me. :-> It's always one thing or another. At one time, Doug was on a jihad against my view that US and other foreign troops should be withdrawn immediately, Proyect was on a jihad against my favorable opinion of Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiksins Wood.
>I would suggest that we have to be careful about interpreting that result:
IMHO, few care about opinion polls in such a war-torn country as Iraq.
>for one thing, recent news reports suggest that the nationalist
>cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is growing in strength and popular base.
>The WaPo recently described him as the most popular politician in Iraq:
>(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/23/AR2006082301647.html)
>
>In Ahmed S Hashim's book about the resistance in Iraq,
>he describes how Sadr is so popular in the Sunni resistance
>strongholds that posters bearing his image are ubiquitous.
I believe that al-Sadr made a mistake in participating in elections. Elections in Iraq have increased sectarianism, as most political parties are organized on a sectarian basis. He, however, is the only politician in Iraq who continues to mobilize Iraqis for mass street protests. He probably needs a partner in Sunni quarters with comparable politics and stature, to organize a national liberation front. I can't think of anyone there, though.
>there is real fear of civil war, directed by the feckless and corrupt SCIRI
>and the takfiris. It is not an accident in this regard that as the SCIRI
>becomes increasingly unpopular, Hakim is trying to revive dreams of
an >autonomous Shi'ite south, something the bulk of Shi'ites have
never supported.
Iraqi Shi'is and Iranians will one day have to drop their support for Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim*, and SCIRI, if they want to have Iraq free from foreign troops and international jihadists and still in one piece.
What is ironic is that Sistani's politics has attracted an odd set of enthusiastic or reluctant supporters, from Washington to Tehran, from the MSM to liberals like Juan Cole to leftists like Gilbert Achcar (recall Achcar's debate with Alex Callinicos), though Sistani is probably more responsible than anyone else among Iraqis for escalating sectarianism -- through his calls for elections and his support for the United Iraqi Alliance list (for which many Iraqis are said to have voted in January and December 2005 because they believed it to be "Sistani's list" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Iraqi_Alliance>).
* Which faction in Iran is supporting whom in Iraq? BBC says this about Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, the former leader of SCIRI and brother of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who was killed in August 2003: "But analysts say that as his stance shifted towards the US, his backing in Iran became weaker among Iranian conservatives but stronger among reformists" (<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3769991.stm>). Very interesting.
>So if the Sadrist movement is forced to re-enter the armed resistance
>on a full-time basis, you might expect a coalition between Sunni
>nationalist groups and the Mahdi army, with exactly that kind of
>loosely 'Islamic' nationalism.
IMHO, what Sunni nationalists engaged in armed resistance badly need is a political wing.
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>