Ex-enemy Iran may be biggest winner in Iraqi poll
from: Telegraph News UK 21/12/2004
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news
By Jack Fairweather in Tuwella
Iraqi officials fear that the big winner from next month's historic
election will be its powerful neighbour and former enemy, Iran.
The countries share a 1,000-mile border, stretching from the flatdesert
wastes and marshes of the south to the stark mountains of the north.
There are plenty of innocent travellers crossing the frontier: pilgrims
on their way to visit Shia Muslim holy places, or people with family
and friends on the other side, a result of Saddam Hussein's relentless
purging of the Shia majority in Iraq.
In the region around the mountain town of Tuwella they rarely bother
using the official crossing, a time-consuming and costly enterprise,
instead simply walking over the hillside above the town.
There are, however, less innocent visitors. Officials of Iraq's
interim government maintain that hundreds of Iranian agents have
infiltrated the country and joined the insurgency in an attempt to
keep American forces unbalanced.
At the same time, they say, Teheran is maintaining a stranglehold on
Shia political parties in Iraq.
The two largest, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq
and the ad-Dawa party, spent decades of exile under Iranian tutelage
and have formed a single voting bloc for the Jan 30 poll. Many
analysts expect them to command a majority over the secular party
led by the interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, and officials fear
Iran will be sitting pretty, with a pliant government of a strong
Islamic bent in Baghdad.
"There is a real concern that the interference we are seeing from
Iran at the moment is just the beginning, and that Baghdad could be
slowly slipping into the orbit of Teheran," said Safa Rasul, chief of
staff of Iraq's National Security Council.
Iraqi leaders from all sides called for calm yesterday after Sunday's
suicide attacks which killed more than 60 people. The elections would
take place on time, they promised.
But amid concerns over the dire security situation, Iraq, with its
traditional ruling Sunni elite, continues to be uncomfortable with
its powerful neighbour, the largest Shia nation.
The war between the two in the 1980s, one of the bloodiest fought
anywhere, began with an Iraqi invasion after it accused Iran of
making a land grab.
In the Kurdish-controlled north officials say they have intercepted a
steady stream of fighters from the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam,
which they say Teheran has sheltered since the US-led invasion to
topple Saddam.
"Iran is continuing to work with Ansar," said one senior Kurdish
official, who believed there were 1,500 members working in Iraq for
the Ansar group, an affiliate of al-Qa'eda.
"They are trained and recruited across the border for terrorist
attacks in the south of Iraq," said the official.
For their part, US officials in Baghdad see Teheran as playing a
more ambivalent role in Iraq's insurgency.
They agree that money and weapons are crossing the border, but say
the support is coming from individual clerical organisations, rather
than representing a concerted government policy, a reflection of
Iran's joint rule by government and religious bodies.
"We believe some ayatollahs have taken an active role, others have
not. They're waiting to see what happens, with a finger in every
pie," said a senior American official.
Privately, officials concede that Iraq is likely to take "an Iranian
turn" after the election, a notion unimaginable before the invasion,
when neo-conservatives in Washington believed they could create the
Middle East's first secular democracy.
Now many grudgingly accept that the elections are likely to usher in
an Islamic state.
The south, where most of the Shia majority live, already has a strong
Iranian and Islamic tone.
As in Iran, religious law imposed by the Hawsa, the Shia clerical
body, now rivals secular courts. Religious parties, often with
militia backing, hold considerable sway over local government.
There are hundreds of Iranian operatives in the south, known simply
as ittila'at - the Persian word for intelligence.
One group, Thar-Allah, was set-up with Iranian money and openly
pledges its loyalty to Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran.
The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution and ad-Dawa party play
down their Iranian roots although they are none the less prevalent.
Both parties were forced into exile in Teheran by Saddam in the 1970s
and early '80s. In 1983, the Supreme Council, under the tutelage of
the late Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim, formed the Badr Brigade
from Iraqi exiles.
The brigade, trained by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,
fought on Iran's side during the Iran-Iraq war. Since returning to
Baghdad in 2003, and for some time before that, the Supreme Council's
call for an Islamic revolution along Iranian lines - as the name of
the organisation suggests - has been softened.
But asked what level of influence Iran has over the parties, one
western diplomat replied: "Vast. In the south of the country the
whole idea of Iraqi nationalism has broken down. There's a strong
sense of community with Iran."
The Supreme Council and ad-Dawa recently formed the United Iraqi
Alliance with several smaller Shia parties with the approval of
Iraq's senior Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
According to his aides, the Iranian-born ayatollah wants an Iraqi
state that strongly encourages Islamic law in all aspects of life,
from controlling women's dress and mandatory prayer lessons in
schools to Islamic codes of marriage and inheritance, without the
overpowering Islamism of the revolutionary regime in Iran.
The effect of Shia dominance in government after the elections is
likely to reduce Iran's support for cross-border terrorism, say some
Iraqi officials.
"We're going to see a lot less violence when Teheran no longer feels
threatened," said the Kurdish interior minister, Saeed Othman.
Back in the frontier town of Tuwella, Omar Ali, who regularly crosses
the border to visit family members, cracks one of the locally grown
walnuts between his hands at his greengrocer's shop, and ponders
Iraq's future.
"We used to have a lot of trade with Iran. They haven't always been
our enemies," he said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?
xml=/news/2004/12/21/wirq21.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/12/21/ixworld.html
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