Clerics may take helm from Politicians in Iraq

The New York Times has a piece on how the politicians are seeking to defuse the crisis caused by the Golden Dome of Samarra atrocity.

It’s good that Zalmay Khalilizad is appearing on local TV and a member of the deliberations among all parties trying to keep an uneasy truce from erupting into a widespread civil conflict.

However, a lot of the politicians are what one US general called Gucci Guerrillas who spent the years of Saddam’s tyranny in exile like Ahmed Chalabi, to cite the most flagrant example.

As the article hints, but does not say, the clerical leaders have perhaps the paramount role to play:

And in their Friday sermons and public statements, political and clerical leaders betrayed an ominous polarization of attitudes about who was at fault in the recent violence, along with a renewed hostility to the American role in Iraq on both sides of the sectarian divide.

The leading Sunni clerics must join with Ayatollah Sistani and Moqtada Al-Sadr to quell widespread violence. A bad omen was the slaughter of 27 participants in a peace rally today. A good omen was a Friday prayer in Basra with both Sunni and Shi'ite participants.

The State Dept had predicted that Saddam's demise would lead to somewhat the same situation as Yugoslavia after Tito. Now that the strongman is gone, new sources of legitimacy must be found, and the clerics who weathered the Saddam autocracy certainly have earned their stripes.

If the politicians elected in December keep dithering, the clerics will become the real leaders by default, not because of democratic methods.