United We Stand? Evaluating Sectarian Divides in Iraq

April 23, 2004

Unedited transcript prepared from a tape recording

9:45 a.m.	Registration
10:00	Panelists:	Zainab al-Suwaij, American Islamic Conference
		Reuel Marc Gerecht, AEI
		Hedieh Mirahmadi, World Organization for Resource Development and Education
	Moderator:	Michael Rubin, AEI
11:00	Adjournment

Proceedings:
MR. RUBIN:  --American Enterprise Institute and thank you for coming on relatively short notice.

The events of the last two weeks have really highlighted some of the issues with regard to Iraq's Shi'a community and the Iraqi Arab Sunni community.  There are conflicting newspaper headlines and such, "Shi'a and Sunnis United," and others were saying that perhaps mainstream Shi'a and Sunnis were not uniting or perhaps the communities weren't even united within themselves, let alone together.

And so today what we've done is brought together a panel of three experts who will help explore some of the differences within Iraq's sectarian communities and try to add a little bit more nuance and explain the complexity of what's really going on in Iraq.

I'm going to keep my comments very short because we do want to hear the guests.  I do want to just briefly introduce them before starting first with Reuel, then Zainab and Hedieh.

At any rate, Reuel needs almost no introduction.  He has done extensive research on, about and in Iraq, as well as in Iran.  He is the author of many books, formerly with the Central Intelligence Agency, and is a prolific writer.

I'm very happy to welcome Zainab and Hedieh to do their first American Enterprise Institute event, as it is my first American Enterprise Institute event.

Zainab is the co-founder and executive director of the American Islamic Congress, born in Basra, Iraq.  She's the granddaughter of one Basra's leading religious Shi'a clerics.  During the failed 1991 uprising against Saddam, she provided medical assistance to the wounded and afterwards was forced to flee.  I had the pleasure of meeting here several years ago and also back in Iraq, where she was working extensively in Southern Iraq and Baghdad with regard to the education system.

Zainab is going to be angry at me for saying this, but Zainab also got me banned from a restaurant in Baghdad because I had offered to pay for the meal, and in front of all of the male waiters, Zainab got up and said, "Michael, sit down.  Shut up.  I'm paying."  And I actually sat down and let her pay, and then afterwards I was too ashamed to show my face.

[Laughter.]

MR. RUBIN:  And Hedieh is the executive director of the World Organization for Resource Development and Education.  She has recently returned from Afghanistan, where she was a senior adviser for civil society at the U.S. embassy in Kabal.  Many of us in the Washington community have known her for ages through her work as executive director of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, and he was also a U.S. delegate to the United Nations Conference on Human Rights.

What we're going to do again is start with Reuel and work our way over.  I'll keep my comments to a minimum to maximize time for Q&A.  At any rate, thank you.

Reuel?

MR. GERECHT:  I would just like to say at the beginning that I think it's actually a mistake that Michael is keeping his commentary to a minimum.  I think that by the end of this we should have him talk about his wanderings through Iraq, which have certainly been more extensive than mine, and certainly more recent, and I think it would be a good idea if we forced him to discuss some of his vagabond ways.

I think we just start off on the big themes, and then we can work our way through perhaps certain details.  I think the biggest theme perhaps of interest is, one, do you have really an incipient Shiite-Sunni alliance being built based on the siege of Fallujah?

I think the answer to that question is, no; that what the siege of Fallujah has clearly shown, actually, is you still do not have that, and that even amongst the militant Shiite sect, and the militant Shiite sect is certainly larger than the Sadrayin [ph].  The Sadrayin have gotten the most attention, but what is striking actually is that if you look at such groups as the al-Dawa Zlamir [ph], which is a highly fractious, but nevertheless it's the oldest Shi'ite political organization, its roots going back to 1967.  These folks are very tough.  They cut their teeth by seducing the Shi'a who made up the backbone of the Communist Party in Iraq, which at one time was a very powerful institution.  These people have not joined in.

The forces of SCIRI, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which has a more powerful military force, have not joined in, and certainly that very difficult-to-quantify force, the armed men that belong, roughly put, to what you might call the Shi'ite tribes, the individuals that Sistani called on last spring and last summer to help him intimidate the Sadrayin in Najaf and Karbala have not gone.  And now these individuals are, by no means, militants.  In fact, they're on the opposite side of the pool, but they have not gone in.

So I think it is certainly wrong to suggest that you are talking about an alliance.  I even think, with time, if anyone has spent any time at all with the Sadrayin, I think the notion that they are going to be one with their Sunni brothers, particularly their fundamentalist Sunni brothers, it's a bit naive.  One could even, in a certain Machiavellian way, look forward to the day that those two forces collide.  So I don't think that's true.

However, what I think can be said is that the siege of Fallujah has the potential for tweaking the nerves of what we might call the Iraqi nationalist nerves, which are very real.  They're very fickle, but they are a profound thing in Iraq.

And it is not hard to imagine a situation, if the siege were to continue, where it would become progressively more difficult for Iraqis, either Shi'a or Kurds or Sunnis, but particularly the Shi'a and the Kurds, who loathe many of the individuals who are responsible for the violence in Fallujah--and remember that Fallujah is also a hot bed, and has been for a long time, of Sunni Wahhabism in Iraq--who loathe these folks, nevertheless, publicly being in a very difficult position to actually support the American action.    That is just simply one of the contradictions of life, and in the Middle East, and in Iraq, in particular, which is one reason why I think the American actions in Fallujah, I don't quite understand them.  We should have, I would have argued, gone in very quickly and in force, and the Marines should have taken it down promptly.  I disagree, I mean, Mr. Brahimi, for example, has said that our actions in Fallujah are simply unacceptable.  For a slightly different reason, I would come to the same conclusion.

So I would hope that that will change because that, in the long term, has a certain potential which is I think quite negative.

Now, on the Sadrayin, in particular, I mean, again, I don't quite understand what the CPA did.  I often have a hard time understanding what the CPA is doing, but I don't understand what they did with Sadr here.  I mean Sadr has been causing us problems for quit some time.  The Pentagon, in particular, as far back as August and September, had come to the conclusion, at least very important people in the Pentagon, had come to the conclusion that he was responsible for the death of American soldiers, yet we did nothing at that time.  We blinked.

Again, in October, when he attempted to sort of declare his own shadow government and march on Najaf, we were a little bit more active, but for the most part I would say we didn't act against him.  So we actually established a certain pattern of acquiescence, and I have not seen the offensive issues of the Hawza that caused us to shut down that newspaper.  I have seen issues of the Hawza earlier, and they were poisonous.  So I would like to know, actually, and I suspect there is no difference between the poisonous stuff I saw a long time ago and the poisonous stuff that apparently was so offensive it made us shut it down.  I am skeptical.  I mean, I think if there actually were something specific in it we would have heard it by now.  So I don't really understand what we did there.

Now, I think we should have gone against the gentleman a long time ago, but once we established this precedent, I am a bit befuddled to discover the reasons behind this, and I'm particularly befuddled to see that we would have taken him on and then militarily prepare for it.  It certainly tells you that military intelligence in the CIA is, no great surprise here, not so hot on the ground and poorly informed the American administration in Baghdad what was likely to come over the hill.

I don't think this actually required a great deal of acumen, but it appears that that was not present.  Now, on the Sadrayin I think this has to be just emphasized over, and over, and over again.  The traditional clergy in Najaf loathe this man, all right?  I mean, they hate him down to the itsy-bitsy corpuscles in their body.  Rarely, have I--usually, there is this consensus inside of the Shi'ite clergy, sort of this brotherly, cousinly, you know, disposition that you aren't supposed to say unkind things about brother clerics.  That does not hold with Sadr.

I was floored by the number of accomplished clerics in Iraq, senior clerics of all of the major families, particularly of the al-Hakim, the Mohammed Sayed al-Hakim, the Grand Ayatollah and Sistani's people, who just simply did not mince words and described that young man in the most unflattering terms.  It's quite something given the fact that he is from the most prominent Shiite clerical family in Iraq, of course, which all of the traditional clergy is aware of.  They hate him.

Now, he has done something which I think is actually quite astute by going to Najaf, and we're going to have to see how this plays out.  It is certainly the best refuge for him to take because it puts pressure both on Sistani and on the Americans, and tempts the Americans to take him on in Najaf, which I believe would be a terrible mistake.  I think that would be wrong.  But, again, what it does show clearly is our situation, you know, our situation would be vastly worse if Sadr, in fact, were more popular in the Shiite community.

We have not seen folks from the Dawa.  We have not seen the armed forces of SCIRI.  We have not seen the Shiite armed tribesmen go against it. I mean, the death toll in Iraq would be ferocious in urban warfare if these folks were really allied with the radical fringe of the Sadrayin.  Now, I think it is important for us to admit that there is a certain slice of young men in Iraq who are powerfully attracted to Sadr, and the Sadrayin cause.  It would be surprising and shocking not to find what you say a millenarian impulse in these young men who have grown up in a truly brutal totalitarian dictatorship.

It is natural for these folks, and again these young men, to not be attracted or potentially attracted to the holy warrior call.  I don't think it's that many, but it is a significant slice I would say of a certain type of young men in the Shiite slums of Basra and of Baghdad.

One doesn't want to overdo it, but I think one has to pay very careful attention to it and realize that this is something that you're going to have to deal with throughout Iraq, and it is something that I don't think we can put off.  I am in favor of allowing Sistani to take the lead on this because I do not believe the Americans, under any circumstances, should go into Najaf.  I think that would be a serious mistake.  But I don't think we should delude ourselves into believing that we're going to negotiate our way out of this in the long term.  I think he is going to come at us, again.  I think he likes it.  I think he has an appetite for it.  So I think we have to be aware of that.

Now, I think on the bigger issue, and I'll stop on that one and pass, the bigger issue, the long-term issue here, the one where people aren't paying attention to, and that's the one I think is really going to be the huge obstacle in Iraq, is the Shi'a and the Kurds.  They're going to have to make up their minds whether they play along and how they deal with each other.  It's by no means clear
how that's going to work.  All I would suggest is it behooves the Americans to do this sooner not later, and we should have had those two parts of the Iraqi mosaic screaming and yelling at each other sooner.  I think, in the long run, it would be better, and I'll pass.

MR. RUBIN:  Zainab?

MS. al-SUWAIJ:  Good morning, and thank you for arranging for this panel.  I appreciate it, Michael, and American Enterprise Institute.

In the past few weeks, we have all been watching and seeing the events that's happening in Iraq, and how things have started to accelerate,  after quite not very stable time in the past year.  But what's happening in Najaf certainly was something that was not expected not only by the Iraq Coalition or CPA, but also by Iraqis themselves and among the Shiites themselves.

What we have seen, before the fall of the regime and after, where many people were asking about the Shiites and their role in the upcoming or the new Iraq, especially after what's been happening in the past 35 years.  In this period of time, many groups get empowered.  Many of them who have been active outside Iraq, like SCIRI and like Dawa Party, they have some of the people inside Iraq who have been active, and of course they've been always discriminated, and they've been always killed and assassinated by the previous government until the fall of the regime last April.

And, also, on the other side, we have Sayed Sadr, which is the father of Muqtada al-Sadr, who has been killed with his two sons in 1999.   After the fall of the regime, we have seen many of these political parties and many of these Shi'a groups getting empowered, returning, some of them who were outside Iraq are returning back to Iraq and trying to take positions in the Governing Council and many other areas inside Iraq.

In the past year or so, the SCIRI, the Supreme Council of the Revolution in Iraq, they return with their leader, Mohammed Baqr Hakim, who became the spiritual leader and appointed his brother, Abdul Aziz Hakim, to be the political leader for the party.

Then, we started seeing a new phenomenon in Iraq, which is involving more of the Shi'a cleric with politics.  Before that was not the tradition of the Shi'a in Iraq.  They always separated between politics and tried to avoid politics and focusing only on religion and spiritual leadership.

We saw Ayatollah Sistani, for example, issuing some fatwas about some--not such words I can say, but statements about what's happening or about the election, and that was because of the lack and the vacuum of a political end, ideological leadership in Iraq, especially after the fall of the regime.

They were never, in the Shi'a tradition throughout many years, goes back to the early centuries ago that many people from the Shi'a tradition, they did not take part in politics, and they tried to avoid politics as much as they can do, and being away from it and focusing on their religion and spiritual leadership.

And so we all saw the 1979 revolution in Iran.  Many people stopped to compare now what's happening in Iraq with Iranian revolution and start asking if Iraq going to become another Islamic country.

This is for Iraqis, and as an Iraqi who lived in Iraq and coming from a religious family, I don't see this is happening in Iraq.  And what happened, and things have started accelerating in the past few weeks with Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi militia is not the norm of the Iraqi Shi'a tradition inside Iraq.

Many of the Iraqi Shi'a leaders, they did show or express their feelings and their disagreement with what has been happening, but unfortunately these kind of activities has been supported by external forces outside Iraq, and this accelerates a lot of--there are a lot of countries outside, they don't mean well to Iraq, and they've been supporting these kind of hostilities and activities inside Iraq not only in the Shi'a parts of Iraq, but also in Fallujah and in the Sunni Triangle there.  This is not because they love Iraq, but they would like to see Iraq shattered and fractured.

Iraq has been going through this period of time of 35 years of dictatorship.  People were not allowed to practice their religion.  They were not allowed to talk openly, but after that fall, that represents a threat to many dictatorships, to many other governments around Iraq.  So, by all means, they don't mean well to have democratic government inside Iraq.

Now, we're talking about the bond between Sunni and Shiites in the past few weeks.  I think this is not accurate.  There is no such bond.  We cannot say there is a collaboration between the Sunni in Fallujah and the Shi'a of Muqtada and his militia in the South because, first of all, there's differences.  Probably there's some kind of collaboration, but not really organized or not really meant to be one force.

Throughout the history, Shiites have been discriminated, and this is not only because during Saddam's period of time, but also before that.  And that goes back probably to the early last century, 1920s, when Iraqi Shiites uprise against the Brits, and it was like the biggest uprising in the history of Iraq, and then the Brits chose to have a king for Iraq who was a Sunni ruling the majority of the Iraqis inside Iraq.

This is what created a lot of sensitivities between the two groups.  Here are the Shi'a majority in Iraq have no power and throughout the past many years, until the fall of the regime last year.  So it's not accurate to say that there is that kind of collaboration between the two.

There are a lot of other issues that are fundamental right now in Iraq.  How can we deal with Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia or how can we deal with people in Fallujah?  In my opinion, and in my other Iraqi people sharing the same opinion with me, is that we should put a marshal law inside the country.  We should have a military government ruling the country for at least one year.  I think this is going to stabilize the country for a while.   And have people being under dictatorship for 35 years, and then all of a sudden the regime has fallen and you are free to do whatever you want, many people they do not know how to use this freedom, how to practice democracy, how to respect minority rights inside Iraq.

So I think, in the upcoming period of time, I think marshal law should be implemented inside Iraq to stop this kind of hostility, to stop many other groups that have been entering Iraq freely from all over, whether from Syria or from Iran or from many other countries, and I think this should stop and marshal law should be implemented inside the country to stop this kind of activity until a legitimate government taking place and until the power is fully transferred to Iraqis.

Thank you.

MR. RUBIN:  Just one quick clarification question.  When you say "marshal law," do you mean by Iraqis or by Coalition forces or by the United Nations?

MS. al-SUWAIJ:  I think by the Coalition forces.

MR. RUBIN:  Hedieh?

MS. MIRAHMADI:  First of all, I would like to thank Michael and AEI for inviting two women to speak on a panel on a topic that is historically an "old boy's club."  Leave it to Michael to be controversial.

[Laughter.]

MS. MIRAHMADI:  I'm afraid I'm going to have to add a little more terminology here, but I want to tell you a story of Sheikh Abdul Qadir Gilani.  He was one of the leading Sunni clerics, and he could have done much to help the United States-led Coalition to restore order and peace in his homeland.  The reason I say "could have" is because he's now in self-imposed exile in Kuala Lumpur.

I've worked with him over the past year to try to get his story heard, with no success, but I think his story is important to illustrate the confusion that's going on right now in the Sunni Triangle.

Sheikh Gilani is the inheritor of the Great Saint of Baghdad, Sheikh Abdul Qadir Gilani.  He maintains a mosque--or at least he used to--a mosque, a community center, and a school where 5,000 people were fed every day from his charity.  Like many other of the moderate religious Sunnis, as a distinction between the secularist Sunnis of Iraq, he is a Sufi of the Qadiri Sufi Order.

Under Saddam Hussein, it was mostly just the Sufis who were allowed to run mosques and practice their religion freely because, historically, they were nonpolitical and nonconfrontational.  A Sufi, which is a misunderstood term today, just means a Muslim that has accepted additional religious duties in order to achieve heightened spirituality.  But most importantly, they are more concerned with their relationship with God than with politics.

Sheikh Gilani did not enjoy an easy life under Saddam, but he was free to practice Islam, and he was part of the established Sunni Authority of Greater Baghdad.  He, and the clerics like him, including the Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdul Modarres, who is about 106 right now, were internationally respected Islamic scholars and teachers of classical moderate Islam.

Saddam knew well that the best bulwark against the rise of the jihaddists were Sufis, so he relied on them to keep the jihaddis and the Muslim Brotherhood out of his mosques.  Everyone knew that Saddam did not like the competition, and this uneasy relationship helped to ensure there was none.

It is important to note, however, that these Sunnis are not Ba'athists.  Unlike the Shi'a of the South or the Islamists, allowing the Sufis to operate the religious administration just served Saddam's agenda of absolute authority.  The fall of Saddam changed this entire dynamic overnight.  In the commotion of the war, the Islamists, and the jihaddists, and the Muslim Brotherhood, calling themselves Saddam dissidents, had the ear of our Coalition leaders.  They cleverly made the case that, as opponents of Saddam, in exile or just released from prison, they were our natural allies.  We used them as informants, translators and confidants, in advertently empowering the very people who are now plotting our deaths at night.

Between these newly ascended Islamists and the U.S. allied Shi'a, there was no room in the public square for the moderate Sunni Sufis.  The Sufis were no less supportive of the invasion and the ousting of Saddam, but the power-hungry Islamists sought revenge against what they considered to be privileged Muslims.  They gave false evidence to our Coalition forces about bombs, Ba'athists and Saddam loyalists among them.  In turn, the Coalition forces raided their homes, imprisoned their fathers, brothers and sons and progressively alienated those who would have otherwise been our strongest allies.

Sheikh Gilani and more than 1,000 clerics who follow him were left powerless.  They had no friends in the CPA to plead their case, other than Michael who met him occasionally, and the ransacking of their community continued.  Islamists were pleased because the Coalition forces were doing the dirty work for them, and they benefitted by taking over the schools and mosques that were formerly controlled by these moderates.

However, this very large segment of the Iraqi community is not going to stay silent forever.  They demanded Gilani and the other clerics to intervene and to organize a resistance, like the Islamists.  Gilani refused, saying that what they would call for would instigate the much-dreaded civil war.

So, without community and religious leadership, the people sought revenge for the death of their loved ones or those taken by Coalition forces in old tribal fashion and exacted retribution.  They resisted Coalition forces because of the horror stories, tales passing from home to home about loved ones captured and disappearing forever, just as they had in the days of Saddam.  As a consequence, our troops are fighting against both would-be friend and foe alike in the Sunni Triangle.

Recently, the Islamists came to Gilani's own mosque and demanded his expulsion.   The community begged him to stay and fight, but again he refused.  The centuries' old home of his noble ancestors is probably in the hands of jihadi fighters who revile his spiritual beliefs and are undoubtedly using it as a safe house for terrorists.

If all of this sounds terribly confusing, you are not alone.  Coalition forces are grappling with many of these same issues every day, but there is a way out of the mess.  First, we must realize that what we see today in many parts of Sunni Iraq is a combined resistance of radical Islamists and traditionalist Sunni Arabs fighting desperately for self-preservation.  The moderate Arab Sunni majority has no seat on the Governing Council, no friends in the CPA and, hence, no future in the governance of Iraq.  Those who do not understand the subtleties of domestic politics in Iraq might be glad to be rid of leaders who did nothing to fight Saddam's oppression.

In reality, the continuing disenfranchisement of this sector is a recipe for disaster.  Creating oppressed and bitter masses in the North will not breed stability and could ultimately lead to the dreaded civil war that we've all heard about and that al Qaeda had promised to incite.  We owe it to the Iraqi people not to have had a hand in creating it.  We need to reach out to the moderate Sunni masses and give them a seat at the table lest they take it by force.

Thanks.

[Applause.]

MR. RUBIN:  I'll just make a few comments before having questions.

First of all, just as a point of clarification or history, the Gilanis, I believe the first prime minister of Iraq was a Gilani, just showing how the fabric of old families and such in important Iraqi societies stay.  It's one of those issues which all too often analysts who just jump in, having never studied the area or spent much time in the area, see a snapshot of the present, whereas, Iraqis see a progression going back decades.

One anecdote about the Atika Gilani mosque, which is a smaller mosque which I had visited on several occasions.  It's a Sunni mosque in Karradah, which is a predominantly Shi'a neighborhood of Baghdad.  The Badr Corps, the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, moved down the street.

Everything was fine for a couple months.  Then one day representatives of the Badr Corps came and talked to Khalid Gilani, who was the person who endowed this Atika Gilani, where his aunt is now buried, and they said, "Look, we want you to start in the call to prayers acknowledging Imam Ali, like the Shi'a do."

And Gilani said, "No.  This is a Sunni mosque.  We're not going to do that."

"Fine," the Badr Corps went away.

The next week a representative came back and said, "Here's the deal.  We'll alternate Fridays.  You can preach every other Friday, and we'll have a Shi'a preach every other Friday."

And, again, he said, "No, this isn't the government mosque.  I endowed this in honor of my aunt.  That's not an option."

The next week the Atika Gilani mosque was raided by about 400 U.S. troops who had received an anonymous tipoff that there were weapons being stored there.  The grave of the aunt was dug up.  The U.S. troops found one old watchman with a Kalashnikov, and of course in Iraq you're allowed to have a Kalashnikov on your own property, just not walking around with it without a permit out on a street.

The long and the short of it is just an illustration of how sometimes the Coalition forces are used by people who we think are our allies, in this case the Badr Corps, which, for anyone that actually goes to a Badr Corps headquarters, they're plastered with anti-American, anti-Western and, frankly, antidemocratic slogans.

I'd also like to make a few comments on what we've heard in the last couple days because it concerns me greatly, and it impacts issues such as unity within the Sunni community and also within the Shi'a community and their unities together.

We've heard a lot about this idea that we should somehow have re-Ba'athification.  It's come out recently in recent days.  I think we're heading for trouble if we conduct re-Ba'athification.  First of all, it's a mistake to assume that the Ba'athist Party represented the Sunnis of Iraq.  It represented some of the Sunnis, but many of them were quite oppressed.  If you take the highway, for many of you that have been to Iraq, out of Baghdad towards Ba'qubah, you then swing up, and it's the road that goes to Kirkuk, most people sit on the highway.  Sometimes it's fun to travel off the highway into some of the Sunni villages, and you'll see the open sewers, the lack of electricity, the lack of clinics and pharmacies.  This isn't because of Coalition occupation, this is because of systematic oppression of all people in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

It's also important to realize that many Iraqis, perhaps they may not be unified right now politically, frankly, lack of political unification is healthy.  Diversity of opinion, tolerance and compromise are facts of life in democracy.  But Iraqis tend to be very unified against the Ba'athist Party.  You see down in Najaf and you also see in Kirkuk and other non-Shi'a areas banners that say, "al mawt lihizb al-Ba'ath," "Death to the Ba'ath Party."

And what we risk doing is, on the mistaken assumption that somehow we're going to appease Sunnis in Fallujah by rehiring Ba'athists we might end up losing the vast majority of the Iraqi people.

Zainab and Reuel were absolutely correct when talking about the Shi'a community, in the sense of betrayal, which many have going back to the U.S. abandonment of them in 1991, as well as to the issues, for example, during the monarchy where the British imposed a Sunni government upon a majority Shi'a population.

Now, some arguments are made that it's all about the technocratic argument I call it, that somehow Iraq was hampered by the fact that not all Ba'athists, the top four levels, perhaps 70,000 out of a total of 24 million, were stripped of, they weren't forbidden from work, they were stripped of their government jobs.  They were perfectly welcome to work in the private sector, and if they're skilled technocrats, by gosh they should.  But the idea that under Saddam Hussein bureaucrats were promoted on their technocratic ability rather than their political loyalty is just a fallacy.

You have a situation when you actually look at pay records, for example, teachers, you'll see Teacher A and Teacher B, each with 5 years' experience in the same school, each teaching the same subject.  The salaries might be different on a scale of one teacher is getting paid 700 percent of the salary of the other one because of special Ba'ath Party awards, and medals and others.  Clearly, this person was informing on their students and on their colleagues.

Some people say Iraqis only joined the Ba'ath Party in order to have a job.  Well, frankly, you couldn't get to the top four levels unless you actively informed, collaborated and, frankly, if you were the reason why others were sent to prison.  It's not true, for example, that the education system collapsed because of the Ba'ath Party and de-Ba'athification.  The fact of the matter is Ba'athist school teaches were fired, but what the press often fails to reveal is there were more than 30,000 unemployed school teachers who had never joined the Ba'ath Party.  That's why they were unemployed.

And so when we're talking about re-Ba'athification, it's not going to smooth ruffled feathers because what we're talking about is firing the teachers who have newly been hired and replacing them with Saddam Hussein's old henchmen.

What I fear we're actually doing is not only losing many of the Arab Sunnis who have come to us for, and frankly may be silent, but are grateful for liberation--silent because they don't trust the United States' staying power--but I fear that many of the Shi'a, again, who were sitting on the sidelines complaining about some of the American mistakes, but grateful for liberation, especially as they finally have closure, as they find their relatives in mass graves and such from the days of 1991 and before, what I fear is if the majority of the Shi'a population doesn't see that they can seek protection in America and doesn't see that we live up to our rhetoric, that we're going to force them into the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which of course there's an historical--frankly there's historical antipathy between Kum and Najaf.

I mean, having the Iranians negotiate in Najaf is like bringing Jacques Chirac in to negotiate in Washington.

[Laughter.]

MR. RUBIN:  I mean, it simply is a misconstrued idea that all Shi'a are the same, and oftentimes the disputes within a group are much more ferocious and much more sensitive than the disputes outside that group.

At any rate, I'm going to put my comments at an end there and open the floor to questions.  I'm going to use my prerogative as chairman to not ask a question because it's always been my pet peeve when I've been in an audience, and so I'm going to take advantage of that by going right to the audience.

The only thing I would ask is you would wait for the microphone, and you identify yourself.  And if you give a speech instead of a question, I'm also power hungry, so I'll look forward to cutting you off.

Yes?

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  My name is Hayat [?] from Al-Kut's newspaper.  My question is to Reuel.

We are a little bit confused.  Are you saying that Fallujah is a center for Wahabis?  Now, our impression was it was a center for Ba'athists, which were secular, actually, and against fundamentalist Wahabis.  That's one.  You also suggested that it ought to be stormed sometime soon and not wait.

And then my question to Zainab--

MR. GERECHT:  I couldn't understand what the second one after Wahabis.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  I got the impression that you are suggestion that Fallujah ought to be stormed soon sometime?

MR. GERECHT:  Yes.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  And my question to Zainab on the marshal law, how will that work with the, let's say, the June 30th deadline or the proposed elections by the end of the year and so on?  Could you explain to us how it would work, would it cover the North, for instance, and how would the Kurds look at that?

Okay.  Thank you.

MR. RUBIN:  Before the questions are answered, I'm also going to use my prerogative to insist that in the future just your most important question because it's a disservice to everyone else in the audience who also has questions.

MR. GERECHT:  Very quickly, Fallujah has been a base of Wahabi action for quite some time, going back into the 1990s, perhaps even into the 1980s.  So, I mean, if it hasn't been mentioned, you haven't seen it, it's because the reporters haven't been doing as good a job as they should have.

And, yes, absolutely, I think the siege is unsustainable.  It's bad.  We should have moved on Fallujah a long time ago, and we shouldn't wait any longer.  We should clear it up.

MS. al-SUWAIJ:  To answer your question about the marshal law, I think it should be implemented inside the country.  The Northern parts of Iraq or Kurdistan, Iraq, has been stable for about 10 to 12 years right now, and I think I'm talking about the rest of the country, and I think that should pass whether in any area.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  That would exclude the North?

MS. al-SUWAIJ:  I mean, the North is not, they don't have the same problems that we have in the rest of the country.

MR. RUBIN:  The second part of the question was how does that square with the June 30th transfer of sovereignty?

MS. al-SUWAIJ:  I think, even if June 30th happened, I think there should be another force that should keep stability inside the country because I'm sure that the Iraqi new army or the Iraqi police are not ready yet to take this kind of responsibility.

MR. RUBIN:  Yes, in the back, Eli?

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  Just a quick comment.  If this panel has the time, you should go to the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding a series hearings.  You'd be much better than some of the panels that they've had this week.

Anyway, I had a quick question.  You're hearing from a number of experts right now that Iraqis, like all Arabs, are particularly sensitive to America's policies regarding Israel.  In fact, Lakhdar Brahimi recently said this.  Is this potentially the right--is this potentially backfiring?  Is this the right analysis, and do a lot of Iraqis, based on your experience on the panel, resent sort of what is considered to be the conventional wisdom of the Arab League, so to speak, or what you're hearing from a number of Arab diplomats?

MR. RUBIN:  Zainab and then Reuel.

MS. al-SUWAIJ:  Well, I think right now what you are hearing, the majority of Iraqis or most of the Iraqis they feel that some of the Arab countries are against them or against their roll[?] towards democracy, and many of them feel that they have been--many Arab countries have been betraying them, that not supporting them in this period of time.

So I think, in the future, that will be kind of, it depends on the new government that's going to take place in Iraq and how they're going to view that amongst the other countries around them.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  Does this even register as an issue?  I'm sorry.  Are a lot of Iraqis right now saying, "Oh, my God, you know.  We're so concerned about the occupation of the West Bank," you know, or are they--I mean, does this enter into their political discussions?

MS. al-SUWAIJ:  I think they do have problems inside Iraq to focus on right now other than focusing on the West Bank.  I think Iraqis are really busy right now with what they have inside the country.

MR. GERECHT:  I would just make one comment.  Hume Horan, who was the principal liaison, in fact, he was the only liaison the Americans had to the Shi'ite clergy and to the Sunni clergy in that fortress known as CPA, Hume has made the off-handed comment that he much prefers dealing with Shi'ite clerics than Sunni clerics, and the principal reason is that, when he's talking with the Shi'a, they never enter the "dismal swamp of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation."

So, you know, at least with some, it's not an issue or is not yet an issue.

MR. RUBIN:  Yes, in the corner?

Just before you ask the question, I do want to take the opportunity, once again, for thanking our panelists, and I also do want to take the opportunity to thank both Molly McKew, who helped put this together--she's standing in the back--and also Jason Fill, with the microphone, who has put up with me for the last two weeks, since I joined AEI, with constant requests for Nexis searches and other support, research support and such, for my writing and such, as well as for the folks who did help me come to American Enterprise Institute.

Question?

MR. GEDRICH:  Fred Gedrich, Freedom Alliance.

Will Saddam Hussein's trial help or hurt in unifying the country?

MR. RUBIN:  Who would like that?

MS. al-SUWAIJ:  I think it will help unifying the country because all Iraqis have been suffering under his dictatorship for the past 35 years, and he did not distinguish between any groups--Sunni or Shi'ite, and Kurds or Arabs--and I think that will help unify the country and will give strength to a new democracy.

MR. RUBIN:  I'm actually going to chime in just in answer to that question as well, that it's been amazing watching projects, for example, like the Iraqi Memory Foundation and how it has drawn together Iraqis of all different ethnicities and sectarian practices, not just in commemorating the bad that happened, but also in remembering how they got into this, about the structure of totalitarianism, about the choices people made at different times.

And it's one of those topics which, just in tea house conversations with workers and also with intellectuals, really draws Iraqis together.  Under Saddam Hussein, for example, between Baghdad and Kirkuk, there were 36 different checkpoints to drive in, and you had a whole system of internal passports and such.  If you weren't a diplomat or from Al Jazeera, you really didn't have the ability to travel around the country.

Now, Iraqis, for example, down in the Shi'a areas, didn't know too much about what happened to the Kurds back in 1988, when Lakhdar Brahimi was under secretary of the Arab League and said nothing.

Likewise, many of the Kurds, who still lived under Saddam's presence, didn't fully understand what happened down in the marshes, where 400,000 Iraqi Shi'a Arabs were displaced and tens of thousands were killed.

And there has been, in their discussions with regards to what's happened with Saddam Hussein, with Tariq Aziz, with Uday and Qusay, a real healing and unification process which has come out.  The important thing is it's been Iraqi led.

Those are just a few of my own observations, from having been there and actually from having witnessed the celebration on the deaths of Uday and Qusay, which spanned ethnicity and sectarian practice and were just as fiercely celebrated in the Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad as in the Shi'a neighborhoods.  And, likewise, I had the fortune to be up in the North when Chemical Ali was captured.

At any rate, next question?  Yes, you, who's looking behind you.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  Thank you, first.

I have two questions--

MR. RUBIN:  First, identify yourself.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  My name is [?].  I'm an Arab journalist.

My first question is for you, for the organizers of the panel, I wonder why didn't you have like a Sunni speaker?  I think you have a Shi'a and a Sufi.  And I think if you had a Sunni, this will help.

MS. MIRAHMADI:  I am a Sunni.  People always say that Sufis are not Sunnis, but I am--

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  You are speaking on behalf of the Sufis, I mean, and she was speaking--

MS. MIRAHMADI:  Sunnis.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  No, you were speaking on behalf of the Sufis.

MS. MIRAHMADI:  Sufi Sunnis, who are just one sect.

MR. GERECHT:   Witness the illuminating moment here.

[Laughter.]

MR. RUBIN:  Not all Sunnis are actually the Arab nationalists or the Wahabis that are present through so much of the Persian Gulf area and the Middle East or at least the ones who oftentimes get the media.  But what's your question?

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  I completely understand.  I just--

MR. RUBIN:  Your question has been answered.  She is Sunni.  What's your next question?

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  My next question is for Hedieh.  I think you have a good presentation, but I have like a few questions for you.

You try to portray the Sufis as a pacifist group, and I think--

MS. MIRAHMADI:  As a what?

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  Pacifist group, and historically this is not true because Sufis led some of the most violent and anti-colonialist forces in the history of the Arab World.

Second, I think somehow you misunderstand the place of Sufis in the Muslim society because I am from Egypt, for example, and most of the society are--belong in some way.  Like my family belong in some way or another way to a Sufi tradition.  So the Sufis are not a separate group within the society.  There are parts of the different groups.

MR. RUBIN:  Okay.  That's the third question, so we're going to give them an opportunity to answer the questions.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  Thank you.

MR. RUBIN:  And then there will be time to talk to people after the talk.

MS. MIRAHMADI:  I think, actually, that was my original point, is that Sufis are part of all Sunni or Arab or Muslim culture.  It's not really distinct.  And I've heard this argument many times about Sufis being anti-colonialists, but I think that the primary difference is that in many places in the world throughout history you see Sufis fighting, but they're not fighting because they're Sufis.

You know, any people put in a situation of colonialism or oppression will fight, but they're not fighting because they're Sufis.  They're just Sufis who happen to be fighting.

MR. RUBIN:  Yes.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  [?] with the Turkish Public Television.

When people talk about the North, they say North is very stable.  My question is one and to you all.  How long do you think the North will be stable?  Because there are two Kurdish groups we know there who have been fighting with each other for a long time.  Also, it's not a unified place because the Kurds unite only against the Turkmen, and there's this Kirkuk, they have more ambitions with the oil fields.

Don't you think it's also a potential area, and any time it can flare up?

MR. RUBIN:  Okay.  I'll actually take the prerogative to answer this question only because I used to live in Northern Iraq or Iraqi Kurdistan--or whatever anyone wants to call it--for nine months about four years ago when I would teach in the universities there.

I would argue, throughout Iraq, many of the neighboring countries had an interest in our military success to be rid of Saddam Hussein, but not necessarily in our political success because, with the exception of Turkey, I don't think many of the neighboring countries wanted to see Iraq as a democracy, and Iraq as a democracy is very threatening to some of the regional countries.

Oftentimes, before liberation, by comparison, the Kurdish areas in the North, which are actually more diverse than just Kurds.   There's Chaledean, there's Turkmens, there's any number of other groups as well, Ahl-e-Haq and so forth.   By comparison, they were doing better than Saddam Hussein.  That's not hard to do.  Do they have their own problems?  Yes.  Are they trying to work them out?  Yes, but it's an answer for another panel to really answer your question in depth because it needs a lot of time and a lot of explanation.

If you want, I can talk to you after the panel, but I'd really like to focus--I'm meaner sometimes on panels than Dani Pletka is when moderating because I really just want to focus on the Sunnis and the Shi'a, but I'll talk to you afterwards about your question.

Yes, Ladan?

MS. ARCHIN:  Ladan Archin.

I just wanted to give Reuel, and Zainab and Michael, who were recently in Iraq, a chance to talk about the elephant in the room, when you talk about Sadr, about his ties to Iran and also other countries--what you, Zainab, talked a little about other nationals inside Iraq and that you can both talk about your most recent experiences in seeing what other nationals, you have seen what they are doing, and what the ties are, and how dangerous they are.

MR. RUBIN:  Zainab?

MS. al-SUWAIJ:  Well, in the past period this time I've been traveling around the country for about 10 months, and I've witnessed in the Southern part of Iraq there are offices and headquarters, for example, for Hezbollah, and that was in the middle of a city, and their flags are there, and their sign and everything, and they've been recruiting people, and they have many activities inside the country.  This certainly is not an Iraqi political party or an Iraqi party.  And also, in Nasiriyah, I saw headquarters for HAMAS.

And I'm wondering, you know, these groups have been banned in many different countries in the West and why they are--

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  [Inaudible.]

MS. al-SUWAIJ:  Signs, and a flag and, you know, a whole building.  So these are kind of the groups that I am talking about.

MR. RUBIN:  I'm going to also jump in with a contribution to an answer to that question, and then we'll just have one more question because I really do want to save time for people to be able to talk to the panelists one-on-one.

With regard to the "big elephant," also known as Iran, there's sometimes a facile assumption on the part of outside of pundits, academics, especially those who have never been to Iraq, that, for example, the assumption goes something like this: The Iranians help support Abdul Aziz Hakim of the [?] of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.  Therefore, they're not supporting anyone else.

That's a little bit facile.  I mean, they can be supporting two or three or more candidates, sometimes playing bad cop and good cop because, for example, if you fund Muqtada al-Sadr, well, suddenly Abdul Haziz Hakim and Ibrahim Jaffri look a lot more moderate, even if they're as hard line as Khomeini was in the early years.

There's also this issue that we often forget about whether, again, going back to the competition because Najaf and Kum, that many Iraqis talk about how Iran wouldn't want a cleric to take charge of Iraq because they don't want anyone to challenge the legitimacy of Kum from Iraq, but therefore they might want a puppet layman, someone like Ibrahim Jaffri, to take the place.

I've been told I should smile when I answer questions and not scowl because my sister tells me I look mean.

[Laughter.]

MR. RUBIN:  Sorry.  And someone was just reminding me of that from the back.

But the last issue with Iran is, with regards to the Iranian charge d'affaires and his assistant who was recently assassinated, these guys, according to the Iranian press, Qumi was the charge d'affaires, were not diplomats.  They were members of the Qods force, a division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps dedicated to the export of revolution.  That, in and of itself, is very telling.

The Iranian diplomats based in France, base in Stockholm, based in Yemen, with the exception of the Ittala'at spies, aren't from the Revolutionary Guards division charged with destabilizing countries and making them into Islamic republics.  Sometimes the facts are staring us in the face, but we tend to ignore them.

Qumi, in this case, the charge d'affaires,  was previously the charge d'affaires in Herat, and before that he was a liaison to Hezbollah in Lebanon.  He tends to be a specialist.  We should be paying attention to that.

Last question, and then--just in the front from the embassy of Jordan--and then we'll break, and we'll have time to talk just informally.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT:  [?], embassy of Jordan.

Mr. Reuel, you pointed out that there is a potential for more people to unite between Mr. Muqtada al-Sadr.  And my question, why the Coalition forces decided to take on al-Sadr and his followers rather than having someone like a Sistani to go and talk to him so that this will serve not to alienate a segment of the Shi'a and bring them on board?

MR. GERECHT:  Well, I mean, in the defense of CPA, I mean, this Sistani-Sadr dialogue has been going on for a long time.  That's one of the reasons why Sadr, in fact, likes to use violence because he can preempt Sistani.

I mean, do not be under any illusion.  There's reason why the senior clergy of Najaf loathe that young man.  He intends, if he succeeds, he will bring them down.  He's not trying to set up an alliance here.  I do not believe that Mr. Sadr is acting the way he is doing just because he wants to have a seat at the table and play along in the new democratic Iraq.  On the contrary.  That boy is a Shi'ite millenarian holy warrior.  He is at odds at war with the traditional clergy.

So I have certain problems with the way tactically we handled this, and I'm waiting for someone to explain to me exactly what happened--and perhaps there was a very good reason at that moment for what the CPA did.  I just wish they had treated Sadr more seriously sooner because, as I said before, I think he is a young man who has an appetite for violence, and I don't think that appetite is going to be negotiated away.

MR. RUBIN:  Before we break, I just want to reiterate my thanks again to both Zainab and Hedieh, who have now just completed their first American Enterprise Institute, but certainly not their last, panel, and thank Reuel as well, as well as the assistants who helped put this together.

Thank you.

[Applause.]

[Whereupon, the proceedings were adjourned.]