Sistani returns to ‘save’ Najaf

NAJAF, Iraq – Iraq’s most prominent Shiite Muslim religious leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al Sistani, made a dramatic return to Iraq on Wednesday after medical treatment in London, and planned to lead thousands of followers on a march Thursday to the embattled city of Najaf in a bid for peace.

“He will march with thousands of his sons to the holy city of Najaf in order to save it from the real tragedy that Najaf is going through,” Hamed al Khafaf, Sistani’s spokesman in Lebanon, said on the Al-Jazeera television network.

In Baghdad, many Iraqis – Sunni Muslim and Shiite – welcomed Sistani’s arrival, saying he could best end the clash that’s pitted American forces and Iraqi police against followers of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in intense fighting over the last three weeks.

Yet Sistani’s arrival – and the possibility that thousands of his followers might converge on battle-torn Najaf – could prove an unwelcome development for the interim Iraqi government and its U.S. supporters. Large crowds of demonstrators in Najaf could thwart American military activities and provide cover for al-Sadr’s fighters to escape.

In what could be a grim foreshadowing of the massive demonstration, violence at a smaller gathering Wednesday killed two Sistani supporters and wounded five outside an American base in the southern holy city. Observers at the scene, including an Iraqi man working for Knight Ridder, said Iraqi police fired on the unarmed demonstrators as they approached the base chanting for an end to the bloodshed.

In a separate demonstration, at least 1,500 Shiites loyal to al-Sadr tried to enter Najaf, but were warned away by the Mahdi Army militiamen they’d come to support.

Angry Iraqi police also rounded up more than 60 Arab and Western journalists at gunpoint in Najaf, and forced them to go to the police station to listen to complaints about news coverage from Police Chief Ghaleb Hashem al Jazairi.

How Sistani would proceed to end the crisis was unclear Wednesday night, as he had yet to issue a formal decree, or fatwa, expressing his intentions.

In the past, Sistani has shied away from confronting al-Sadr, who nominally respects Sistani’s seniority in the Shiite religious hierarchy. The popularity al-Sadr has gained among poor, uneducated Shiites by confronting the United States and the interim Iraqi government would make it extremely difficult for Sistani to change that stance now.

Sistani is a political moderate, supporting democratic government and opposing an Iranian-style theocracy. While generally staying in the background, he’s thwarted American efforts to impose political solutions on Iraq several times, and has been a lukewarm supporter, at best, of the U.S.-backed plan to move toward a democratic government by entrusting an appointed interim government.

Any success by Sistani at ending the fighting in Najaf could further undermine the authority of the U.S.-supported interim government led by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whose efforts so far have failed to defuse the crisis.

“Nobody disobeys Sistani, even during the tyranny of Saddam,” said Sabir Abu Ali, 67, a trustee of the al Zuwiya Husseni, a Shiite mosque in Baghdad. “He has a very high stature by God. Whoever disobeys him will be harmed by God.”

Nabil Mohammed Salim, a political science professor at Baghdad University, welcomed Sistani’s arrival, saying that even devout al-Sadr supporters would be hard-pressed to disregard the ayatollah’s orders.

Within hours of the announcement Wednesday morning that Sistani had arrived in the southern city of Basra by way of Kuwait, an al-Sadr spokesman said the cleric’s Mahdi Army would suspend fighting in Basra, where it’s been clashing with British forces, out of respect for Sistani.

Sistani had left Iraq for London just as the fighting intensified, and had an angioplasty to unblock a coronary artery.

Maj. Jay Antonelli, a Marine spokesman in Baghdad, said the military hadn’t made any assessments about al Sistani’s impact on the fighting.

Fighting continued Wednesday in the old city that surrounds the Imam Ali shrine, where al-Sadr supporters have taken refuge.