The bloody conflict in Najaf, specifically what to do about Moqtada Al-Sadr, is this week's focus, writes Rasha Saad Fighting in the sacred Shia city of Najaf between Shia leader Moqtada Al-Sadr and his Al-Mahdi army on one side and US and Iraqi forces on the other were the focus of Arab commentators this week who tended to analyse motives behind and repercussions of the battle that has reached the mosque or marqad of Imam Ali (where he was buried). Abdul-Wahab Badrakhan wrote on Saturday in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper that the current battle is nothing but an extension of the fighting that preceded the transfer of authority. Badrakhan wrote that the purpose of such violence was to either weaken or break Moqtada Al-Sadr's movement in order not to embarrass or force the Iraqi government into a confrontation which it is incapable of handling. Badrakhan believes that the present time, whose events coincided with those in Falluja, provides the opportunity for a truce in Najaf. However, insurgency in the city is looming in the background. There is, for one, an Iraqi government capable of providing "legal" cover for the Americans. There is also a consensus among the represented Shia forces in government that Moqtada Al-Sadr must go. There is, too, an Iraqi authority that seeks to prove that it can introduce reforms after the toppling of the previous regime. Finally, there is an American need to persuade its troops that minor local victories could regain lost prestige. "The desperate need for victory forced the Americans to direct a Hollywood scene in which their soldiers storm Moqtada Al-Sadr's residence. They did not allow Iraqi troops to share this extraordinary glory," Badrakhan wrote. The Saudi paper Al-Riyadh gave another interpretation. The paper wrote in its editorial on Thursday that the violence and chaos in Iraq are not the result of internal rifts between religious and nationalistic ideologies but a result of the isolation and the wars of the Saddam era which created a generation which has seen nothing but funerals and blood. Al-Riyadh added: "The foreign powers intervened in Iraq under the pretext of ousting an unjust regime but they created a regime that is more unjust and more chaotic." The US mistake, the paper charges, is that it solved an error with a crime and thus made Iraq an attraction for organised crime. "In this atmosphere and in the absence of a solution came the Najaf clashes to create and maintain a battle that might be prolonged." In its Saturday edition, the Lebanese Assafir newspaper highlighted several fiery Friday noon speeches given by renowned Shia religious leaders in Lebanon's mosques who all are apparently supporting Al-Sadr's loyalists in Najaf. They warned of the repercussions of the Najaf violence and called upon Arab governments and the international community to halt it. Sheikh Abdul-Amir Qablan, deputy chief of the Higher Islamic Shia Council, called on Iraqi tribes to "march to Najaf to protect it with their body and soul" and called on all Iraqis to "hold strikes and demonstrations in condemnation of the crimes being committed in the city of Imam Ali". Grand Ayatollah Mohamed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanon's most senior Shia cleric, urged Muslims around the world to move to save the marqad of Imam Ali. "Muslims around the world took action when Jews threatened Al-Aqsa Mosque. Why don't they challenge the American and Iraqi government threats against the marqad of Imam Ali? When will this silence be broken?" Fadlallah asked. Fadlallah said he neither supported chaos nor the absence of law. But he pointed to "American provocation" as the main instigator of the deteriorating situation in Najaf. Fadlallah also blamed the Iraqi interim government for its stance. "Does the current phase that Iraq is undergoing allow the interim government to use violence? And can it impose its will?... There is no Iraqi force, only an international force under US leadership which is perceived by Iraqis to be an extension of the occupation." The Arab press also included many calls for an Iraqi dialogue and peaceful and political settlements. In its editorial on Sunday the UAE's Al- Bayan wrote, "the ongoing bloody confrontations in Najaf cannot be settled by the military arm of occupation. Thus we believe that dialogue is the most effective means of stopping the bloodshed." Iranian analyst and secretary-general of Arab- Iranian Dialogue, Mohamed Sadeq Al-Husseini, opened fire on Moqtada Al-Sadr for not possessing genuine will to allow a dialogue and for turning a mosque into a battlefield. Al-Husseini reflected the opinion of many Shia commentators who see in Al-Sadr an inexperienced politician who gathers around him a gang of outlaws and mobsters. Al- Husseini compared Al-Sadr to his father Mohamed, killed during Saddam Hussein's regime, who, he said, exerted every effort to establish a dialogue and called for a political solution for every dispute either with Iraq's internal powers or invading foreign troops. "Sadeq Al-Sadr had a deep belief that the struggle for independence and freedom is a long and unpaved journey that needs patience, tolerance and to know how to endure pain." Al-Husseini believes that Moqtada Jr has obviously run out of patience "because he was not sincere when he said that he seeks a dialogue and is ready to sit down with his rivals. "Sadr III [Moqtada's grandfather], Moqtada's father and his uncle, the great Islamic philosopher Mohamed Baqer Al-Sadr -- all killed during Saddam's reign -- have paid the price for their steadfastness and principles which their successor [Moqtada] has abandoned in the battle in Najaf." Lebanese writer Joseph Samaha ridiculed the calls for a dialogue arguing that the supporters of such talks are naïve and do not read current events well. "Those who believe what happened in Najaf was an unintentional slip from the occupation that can be corrected are burying their heads in the sand," he wrote in Assafir on Friday. According to Samaha what is happening in Najaf is at the centre of a well-planned American scheme. He emphasised that the US seeks to turn Iraq into a military, oil, economic, political and ideological base. "Iraq as a US base is, in the American dogma, a springboard for the Middle East to re-structure the region beginning with Saudi Arabia, then Egypt, Iran, Syria and Palestine." Samaha does not rule out American endeavours to turn Iraq into a democracy. But, according to him, the US is conditioning such democracy on utter Iraqi compliance to Washington. "The Americans will first make sure that the Iraqis are complying with Washington and then offer them just enough democracy so as not to threaten its interests."
