Ayatollah Sistani to shape Iraq future as Shia bloc win looms

‘‘What he wants is influence over the constitution-writing process,’’ said Mowaffak Rubaie, a prominent Shiite politician. ‘‘He wants to be sure it’s done right.’’ The electoral sweep gives Shias allied with Sistani a measure of power that they have not had in Iraq in centuries.

But for the US, their victory also raises the specter of an Islamic state with more ties and affinities to Iran than with any other country in the region.

The extent to which Iraq becomes an Islamic or a secular state will be largely in the hands of this Iranian-born cleric, who, like most of the ayatollahs who surround him, has not met with US diplomats or their British counterparts since the invasion in 2003. Although the 74-year-old Sistani insists that he wants nothing to do with politics, he has been arguably the most important figure on the Iraqi political scene almost from the day the Americans entered the country.

Early in the occupation, he championed direct elections ‘a demand that the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority accepted only reluctantly’. He also insisted that the constitution could only be written by a body directly elected by Iraqis.

A year ago, hundreds of thousands of his followers took to the streets to support a faster timetable than one proposed by the US and, even more impressively, Sistani was able to send them home, as if he were turning off a tap.

Once elections were set, he engineered the formation of a largely Shiite slate of candidates, many with a religious orientation. Heading the list is Abdelaziz Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and a cleric who spent nearly 20 years in exile in Iran during the Hussein regime.

Three of Sistani’s envoys, all clerics, are on the list, and the Dawa Party, a theocratic Shia party with ties to Iran, has a strong presence on it. But Sistani also included those without ties to religious groups, such as Ahmad Chalabi, who heads the Iraqi National Congress, and independents such as nuclear scientist Hussein Shahristani.

Sistani let the slate use his picture on its campaign materials and he issued a fatwa, or religious opinion, making voting a duty on a par with fasting in Ramadan.

But the next phase will have even greater consequences. Under the transitional administrative law that governs the political process, the national assembly that was just elected will name a committee to draft a permanent constitution.

The panel can include members of the assembly and outsiders to write the document, which must be approved by the full assembly and put to a popular referendum to take effect.

Sistani’s associates say he has prepared for this moment for years. Although he has lived a cloistered life in the holy city of Najaf, immersed in religious study, he is said to be passionately interested in politics and can converse in depth about different systems of government.

It is unclear exactly what kind of government Sistani wants. Sistani has explicitly distanced himself from Iran. He also doesn’t support the Iranian theocracy that is based on the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s doctrine of velayat-e-faqih, or rule of religious jurists.

But Sistani, who was born in the Iranian city of Mashad, a pilgrimage center, does envision a powerful role for clerics in the new Iraq. Secular members of the Alliance slate say Sistani does not plan to allow clerics to serve in government, but several associates of Sistani say that there is no hard-and-fast rule. —LAT-WP