Mick Hartley

Amir Taheri on why we shouldn’t be concerned about the choice of the leader of an Islamist party as a compromise candidate for Iraqi Prime Minister:

[T]he fact that Grand Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Sistani, the primus inter pares of Shiite clerics, has not opposed the nomination is a sure sign that Jaafari has distanced himself from the most questionable positions of his party. Sistani refused persistent demands by the victorious alliance for him to pick the next prime minister. His message was clear: You are now answerable to your electorate, not to me!

Nevertheless, it is certain that Sistani, who regards the Khomeinist regime in Iran as an abomination, would not have remained so circumspect had there been any real danger of a drift towards Iranian-style mullahrchy in Iraq.

So, why did the Shiites pick Jaafari? There are at least three reasons.

The first is that Jaafari’s presence at the head of a new interim government could deprive both Shiite and Sunni fundamentalists of their main claim that the new Iraqi leadership consists of a bunch of anti-religious personalities determined to reduce the role of Islam in Iraqi society. Jaafari’s designer stubble appeals to the more religious elements while his Jermyn Street suits are reassuring to the secular middle classes. Since the main task of the next interim government is to write a new permanent constitution and submit it to a referendum, it is important that the fundamentalists be deprived of their key arguments.
The second reason why Jaafari was chosen is his good standing among Arab Sunnis who stayed away from the elections in large numbers. Jaafari appeals to the more religious elements among the Shiites, and this could help the new government to isolate the secularist Sunnis, mostly remnants of the Saddamite regime.

Jaafari also has the added advantage of having consistently opposed the policy of de-Ba’athification, so ardently advocated by his principal Shiite political rival Ahmad Chalabi. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civil servants, businessmen, and military personnel, who had carried Ba’ath Party membership cards to remain in the game or even to stay alive, regard Jaafari as the only Shiite leader capable of preventing a witch-hunt against them.

Jaafari’s choice should also be seen as a signal that the new Iraqi leadership wishes to reassure its Arab neighbours. Of the four candidates in the race for the premiership, Jaafari is the one that is regarded with the least suspicion by the Sunni-ruled Arab states.