SHI'A INDEPENDENT ON SISTANI, NEW POLITICAL FRONT,

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BAGHDAD 004721 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/26/2016 TAGS: PREL PGOV PINS IZ SUBJECT: SHI'A INDEPENDENT ON SISTANI, NEW POLITICAL FRONT, AND SADRISTS REF: A. BAGHDAD 4631 AND PREVIOUS ¶B. BAGHDAD 4592 ¶C. BAGHDAD 4405 Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Margaret Scobey for reasons 1.4 (b) an d (d). ¶1. (C) Summary: Khalid al-Attiyah, Shi'a independent and First Deputy Speaker of the Council of Representatives (CoR), gave Charge a readout of his December 23 trip to Najaf. Al-Attiyah and several other Shi'a leaders, primarily from the Dawa party, visited Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr in an effort to convince the Sadrists to rejoin the government. According to al-Attiyah, Sistani emphasized the need for continued dialogue with the Sadrists and wanted to see the Shi'a coalition preserved. Al-Sadr, perhaps mistakenly believing that the delegation was seeking his group's return in order to reach quorum at CoR, repeated his demand for a timetable for coalition withdrawal. On the "moderate front," al-Attiyah said that its advocates had not effectively presented the idea to Sistani, and others had led him to believe that it was designed to isolate the Sadrists before attacking them. Al-Attiyah recommended that the new group be called "the front for supporting the government" and focus on the need for strengthening the institutions of the state. If presented in this way, he argued, people would support it. SCIRI parliamentarian Rida Jawad Taqi noted separately to PolOff that SCIRI had not sent a representative on the December 23 trip because Abdulaziz al-Hakim did not want to go "begging" to Muqtada al-Sadr. End summary. -------------- Al-Sadr Plays Hard to Get -------------- ¶2. (C) Al-Attiyah told the Charge on December 24 that the Najaf visit resulted from the belief of some within the Shi'a coalition (UIC) that they should exert their utmost efforts to convince the Sadrists to return to the government. These UIC members believed that it was better to contain and try to moderate the Sadrists within the government rather than risking protests and other problems if they were outside the government. According to al-Attiyah, Sistani emphasized the need for dialogue with the Sadrists and containing them within the Shi'a coalition. He told the UIC delegation that he wanted the constitutional political process to be respected, that weapons should only be in the hands of the government, that the ministers and government had to do a better job of providing services, and that he felt "pained" that so many CoR members were performing the hajj rather than attending to their official duties. ¶3. (C) The delegation then visited Muqtada al-Sadr, staying for approximately three hours. Their central message to al-Sadr, according to al-Attiyah, was that the Sadrists should not act as an individual party outside the UIC but should seek to resolve any issues within the UIC's "5/7" mechanism. (Note: Under this mechanism, a UIC decision requires the support of five of its seven constituent groups, i.e. SCIRI, Badr, Dawa, Dawa Tanzim, the independents, Fadhila, and the Sadrists. End note.) They also assured al-Sadr that the olive branch extended to former Baath party members (at least those who had not committed crimes) at the recent political parties' conference did not represent an opening to the Baath party (ref B). According to al-Attiyah, al-Sadr "regrettably" misinterpreted the delegation's central message to imply that the UIC, and the government in general, was desperate for the Sadrists to return in order to be able to conduct the legislative process, i.e. to reach a quorum (ref C). He therefore repeated his demands that a timetable for coalition withdrawal be established as a condition for returning and asked for an apology from the Iraqi government for seeking an extension of the coalition mandate without CoR's approval. Al-Sadr, al-Attiyah continued, said he was open to continued dialogue, and al-Attiyah sensed that al-Sadr "wanted in his heart to return to CoR, perhaps after the Eid." -------------- A "Front to Support the Government" -------------- ¶4. (C) Al-Attiyah then turned to the "moderate front" idea (ref A),saying he wanted to make some recommendations as someone concerned with building the Iraqi state. Sistani, he said, had understood "from certain parties" that the moderate front was intended to isolate the Sadrists in preparation for attacking them later on. As a Shi'a authority with responsibility for the UIC, al-Attiyah continued, Sistani did not want to see division or bloodshed and preferred the BAGHDAD 00004721 002 OF 002 approach of "containing" the Sadrists politically. "We did not prepare the ground for him by presenting the reasons for this front," Al-Attiyah noted, "so he heard theories that were incorrect." ¶5. (C) Al-Attiyah then offered his counsel on how to present the idea effectively. The Iraqi/Shi'a street, he noted, wanted to see the strengthening of state institutions and realized that a collapse of the current government would be catastrophic. The movement should not be presented as a "moderate" front, al-Attiyah argued forcefully, because that implied isolation of non-moderates. Instead, it should be presented as a "front to support the government," to support the rule of law, to take illegal weapons off the streets, to build state institutions, to ensure provision of services, etc. If presented in this framework and open to all who agreed, al-Attiyah continued, the front would be accepted by the people. ¶6. (C) The Charge said that she liked al-Attiyah's formula for presenting the movement as a "front to support the government." The challenge, she noted, was to create a coalition that could ensure 138 votes in the parliament without being so broad it was impossible to get agreement. Al-Attiyah agreed, saying that the Kurds and most of the UIC would support such a coalition to support Prime Minister Maliki's government. He urged the Charge to exert more effort with the IIP so that they, too, would support this coalition. "With support from these groups for the Prime Minister and the emphasis on rebuilding the security forces," al-Attiyah continued, "we would be moving in a good direction." -------------- A SCIRI Perspective -------------- ¶7. (C) In an earlier conversation with PolOff on December 24, SCIRI CoR member Ridha Jawad Taqi, who had received a readout from al-Attiyah about the trip to Najaf, gave a similar account of the trip and its outcome but added SCIRI's perspective. SCIRI had not joined the delegation to Najaf, Taqi said, because Abdulaziz al-Hakim was angry about JAM violence in Samawah and elsewhere and "did not want to go begging to al-Sadr." He acknowledged that SCIRI had not effectively presented the idea of the moderate front to Sistani, perhaps because Ammar al-Hakim, Abdulaziz's Najaf-based son, has been in Mecca in advance of the hajj. He claimed that Abdulaziz had considered pushing forward on the idea of the moderate front without Sistani's approval, but that deputies such as Humam Hamoudi and Hadi al-Amri had argued it was necessary. Taqi believed that the moderate front idea could move ahead if five of the seven UIC constituent groups supported the moderate front idea, but he noted that the Dawa party seemed to be leaning against it. -------------- Comment -------------- ¶8. (C) This period is clearly one of turmoil within the Shi'a coalition. At opposite sides of this turmoil, as usual, are the Sadrists and SCIRI/Badr, with Dawa uneasily entertaining the idea of joining a new front to support the government on the one hand and trying to bring the Sadrists back into the government on the other. End comment. SCOBEY