The baffling Sistani

The Washington Post reports that "administration officials say they are baffled over exactly what he wants -- and even more confused about what it will take to get him to back off his demand for direct elections."

Kind of answers itself, doesn't it? Sistani wants direct elections. He doesn't want a caucus system which is easily manipulated and controlled. One of his key demands, according to the rally the other day, is "no power to those from the outside" - i.e. he rejects any scheme which provides a non-democratic route to power for Ahmed Chalabi and other unpopular exiles. Democratic elections to produce a genuinely representative government - is that so hard to understand?

The problem isn't one of comprehension, really. The Bush administration and the CPA understand just fine, they just don't want those things. What they can't figure out is how to get Sistani to change his mind, a very different challenge.

Every college campus is plastered with posters about sexual assualt: "What part of no don't you understand?" Seems applicable here.

NOTE: Juan Cole, as usual, has a great overview of the Sistani-inspired rallies.

Comments

[paper_tigress]

According to Le Monde, British troops were rather shy in their estimate of 30,000 people at the recent street demo in Basrah:

Basrah, Iraq’s second largest city, hasn’t seen a demonstration like this for 2 decades. More than 100,000 people assembled on the edges of this Shi’ite city to demand immediate, direct elections to choose an assembly which will appoint a government and draft a Constitution....
Assembled in response to a call from Shi’ite religious authorities and several different organizations, the street demonstration, perfectly organized, vowed to observe Ali Al-Sistani’s injunctions to a man....Most of Basrah as well as the populations of surrounding towns converged on the Al Abelah mosque in the run-down Maqal district as a both a “national and a religious duty.” Buses and minivans ferried protesters to the site, displaying banners proclaiming, “We demand a Constitution written by Iraqi hands and not by the occupiers or the IGC. Meanwhile the crowd chanted, “Yes, yes to Islam”, “No, no to the Americans” and “Saddam Hussein: Never Again”.

“We are not cowards. We want our rights to be respected, our ideas to be heard and peace”, declared Ali Hakim Al Safi, Ali Al-Sistani’s regional representative. "We don’t want violence. But, if we are opposed, our people will answer the call to duty as regards the occupying forces and we will endure the consequences, because we are courageous. The November 15 agreement is propaganda deployed by Bush to win the upcoming US presidential elections.”

Al-Sistani has given on sign of relenting, say the French. He wants elections and he wants them _now_: "We want free, popular elections and not appointments. Every Iraqi has his own voice and his own opinion. Political power belongs to the Iraqis and not to those who have come here from foreign countries. The IGC is an insult to democracy, elections, and a nation’s freedom."

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3210,36-349333,0.html

[charles]

Don't you hate it when foreigners like Sistani take president Bush at his word in wanting democracy?

Charles