Now, with an office in a looted former hotel along the Euphrates River, Duaffar, 35, and his 15th of Shaban Movement are angling for political power. Duaffar recently won a seat on the U.S.-appointed transitional council, holds the province’s security portfolio and is preparing to run for office whenever Nasiriya holds a popular vote. “Nasiriya was destroyed by the regime,” says Duaffar. “We have an opportunity to set matters right.”
After 25 years under Saddam’s jackboot, this destitute city in the Shiite south has become an unruly laboratory for democracy. Armed former mujahedin have traded their guns for political manifestos. Moderate religious groups such as the Islamic Dawa Party, radical followers of the young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and 35 other factions and movements–ranging from the Iraqi Communist Party to the Hizbullah movement in Iraq–have also entered the political arena. The jockeying for power is intense: while much of the focus at the national level is on the resurgent political clout of Iraq’s Shiites, the free-for-all in places like Nasiriya provides ample evidence of the dangerous fissures within the Shiite community itself. “They’re all playing inside the political process now,” says John Bourne, coordinator for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Nasiriya, “but they’re all capable of turning to violence.”
Nasiriya’s political awakening follows years of repression. After the Iraqi military put down the 1991 uprising, many fighters retreated to nearby marshes, where they continued sporadic attacks against Baathists and Saddam’s security forces. The regime responded by draining the marshes, shelling Shiite villages and financially starving Nasiriya, an ancient city of 500,000 straddling the Euphrates 320 kilometers southeast of Baghdad. The city became a textbook case of death by neglect: the infrastructure rotted, disease rates skyrocketed, joblessness soared. The fierce battle between U.S. forces and the Saddam Fedayeen last April and subsequent looting left much of the city in ruins. Today Nasiriya is a forlorn metropolis of bullet-pocked and burned buildings, pools of stagnant water and dusty streets almost devoid of greenery. By one estimate it will take at least $150 million to give the city potable water and a working sewage system. One Coalition official calls the place “the worst city in Iraq.”
Nasiriya’s desperate condition has bolstered the fortunes of the former mujahedin. It has also given nearby Iran an opportunity to shape events. In May armed Shiite fighters began returning from exile in Iran, occupying the offices that the Baathists and security forces had abandoned. First came the Badr Brigades, the military wing of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), an exile group led by the cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim. After his murder in August he was replaced as leader of SCIRI and the Badr forces by his younger brother Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who is also a member of Iraq’s Governing Council and is close to Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The Badr forces set up political branches in 22 towns and villages across the province, and established a security force, charities and walk-in offices that dispense advice and cash. Last week NEWSWEEK observed Badr staffers handing out crisp new $50 and $100 bills from a large stack to eager supplicants; the CPA says the money almost certainly comes from Iran.
The chief rival of the Badr Brigades is Duaffar’s 15th of Shaban Movement (named for the first day of the 1991 uprising), most of whose fighters remained in Iraq’s marshes throughout their struggle and didn’t develop such strong ties to Iran. Some members of the group, which remains armed and carries out neighborhood security patrols, express bitterness about the Badr organization’s high level of Iranian support. “Oppositionists should stand and face their enemy,” says one high-ranking member of the 15th of Shaban Movement in Nasiriya, “not take refuge in another country.” But leaders of both groups insist they are “moderates” who reject the hard-line Shiism espoused by the Iranian theocracy.
A bigger worry for the U.S.-led Coalition is al-Sadr’s militant religious movement. The 29-year-old cleric’s uncompromising message–anti-American, anti-occupation, anti-Israel–and his embrace of Iranian-style fundamentalism has posed a challenge to Sistani and his followers and made him wildly popular among Iraq’s disaffected Shiite masses. Al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army–an armed vigilante group that provides the cleric’s bodyguards and political muscle–last fall engaged Sistani supporters in a pitched street battle in Karbala that left a dozen people dead. While the nexus of al-Sadr’s power is the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, he is also a forceful presence in Nasiriya. Says Bourne: “Al-Sadr has built up a large following among unemployed young men.”
Last month al-Sadr’s followers, along with other radical Islamicists, organized demonstrations to oust Nasiriya’s transitional council, a 36-member provincial body that was appointed by the Coalition last spring. Four thousand protesters, some carrying Kalashnikovs, besieged Gov. Sabri Rumayidh in his offices, denounced the government as illegitimate and demanded that he and the council members step down. Rumayidh called in his own armed tribesmen for support, and after a tense standoff the protests faded away. The governor has promised to remove some members of the council. But Sheikh Aws al-Khafaji, director of the Sadr organization’s southern offices, says he will start up the demonstrations again if the council isn’t dissolved. Rumayidh says the chaos and near eruption of violence in recent weeks is to be expected in a fledgling democracy. “The police are weak, the law can’t be properly executed, but it will work itself out, inshallah,” he says.
The rivalries are being fueled by both personal and doctrinal differences. But the growing demand for popular elections has united many of the factions–at least temporarily. A group of 14 parties–including Dawa, SCIRI and the 15th of Shaban Movement–signed a petition circulated by the Sadr group last week calling on L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, to permit direct votes at the provincial level. The CPA has already conducted elections successfully in several towns in the province. Interestingly, no party dominated in that balloting, reflecting the independent thinking of the Shiites and their reluctance to empower a single faction, CPA officials say. “We just got rid of a party that grabbed all the power,” says one Nasiriya businessman. “We’re fearful of repeating history.”
Bourne is confident that provincial elections can go off without a hitch. But he worries that if Iraq rushes headlong into a national vote, with control of the country at stake, the results could be disastrous here. “Campaigning on that scale would be hotter, more emotional–and potentially violent,” he says. If Duaffar and his rivals truly are to set things right, that kind of infighting is the last thing they need.
