SENIOR AYATOLLAH JITTERY ABOUT U.S. SECURITY RAMP

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BAGHDAD 003040

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/20/2018
TAGS: PGOV PREL KISL IZ IR
SUBJECT: SENIOR AYATOLLAH JITTERY ABOUT U.S. SECURITY RAMP
DOWN

Classified By: Classified by Political Minister Counselor Robert Ford f
or reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).


1. (C) Summary: Ayatollah Hussein Al-Sadr, Baghdad's senior
Shi'a cleric, warned PMIN on September 19 that the Iraqi
government was extremely fragile and would be quickly toppled
if the U.S. withdrew forces too quickly. Generally
supportive of the U.S., he criticized the USG's current
course and asked if we had invaded Iraq only to turn it over
to Iran and the Wahhabis. He said Iraq's Shi'a community was
deeply divided, with ISCI, the preeminent Shi'a party in
Iraq's southern provinces, now hated with a passion formerly
reserved for Saddam. He also warned that the Badr Corps,
with Iranian support, was moving in to the fill the void left
by the declining Jaysh al-Mahdi, especially in Basra and
Maysan, and claimed Sunni insurgents were training in the
west of Syria. He also expressed concern for the safety of
prominent secular parliament Mithal Alousi and was gratified
to hear of U.S. efforts to defend him. A long-time friend
of the Embassy, we found the Ayatollah more critical of the
USG and worried about the future than in past encounters.
End summary.


2. (C) Ayatollah Hussein Al-Sadr entertained PMIN and poloffs
on September 19 for a Ramadan evening meal at his residence
adjacent to the holy Khadimayn Shi'a shrine in northwestern
Baghdad. Ayatollah Hussein is arguably the most influential
Shi'a cleric in Baghdad, and presides over a national
network of charitable and development activities, including
the recent construction of a 600 bed orphanage. While he
professes a preference for spiritual over political matters,
he is in fact keenly interested and engaged in politics and
has godfathered a tribal unity initiative and a nascent
political party (the Iraqi People's Party). Though
technically outranked by several other Najaf-based
Ayatollahs, he remains one of Iraq's most influential Shi'a
clerics and is considered a potential successor to Grand
Ayatollah Sistani.

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Security Good but Trending Downward
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3. (C) Acknowledging major improvements to the security
environment in the past two years, Ayatollah Hussein believed
security was starting to trend downward. Much of the blame,
he contended, belonged to the Iraqi security forces, which
were ridden with sectarian militias and hobbled by an
unprofessional and ill-educated officer corps. "I always
warned against the absorption of (mainly Shi'a) militias into
the security forces," he recalled, "bring them into the
Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Industry, anywhere,
but not into the police and the army." Today it was not
unusual to find an Iraqi major or colonel, with no military
expertise, and barely able to read, he charged.


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GOI Not Ready for Prime Time
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4. (C) The Ayatollah asked about the SOFA negotiations and
PMIN briefly outlined the state of play, highlighting that
the U.S. needs a legal basis to keep troops in Iraq and that
if troops remain they will stand down ever more as Iraqi
forces take more and more of the burden. Sadr professed
alarm at U.S. plans to ramp down security operations. "Did
the U.S. invade Iraq only to turn it over, at the end, to
Iran and the Wahabbis?" he asked indignantly. Sadr was
adamant that the public lacks trust in the Iraqi security
forces. Nor is the broader GOI able to shoulder national
security responsibilities alone. Ba'athists and
Iranian-backed elements pose a grave threat, and would likely
topple the government within weeks if it lost direct U.S.
security backing.



5. (C) The GOI is fragile and unpopular, Sadr claimed.
Implying that he considered Maliki a weak leader, he recalled
chiding the Prime Minister, earlier in his tenure, for trying
to appease Sadrists by offering them cabinet spots ostensibly
reserved for "independents." Sadr was particularly venomous
about the circle of advisors around Maliki whom he considered
unprincipled. The appointment of political party cronies
instead of technocrats to the Cabinet has meant that service
delivery remains atrocious, he continued. His own
neighborhood of Kadhimiya receives as little as 2-3 hours of
electricity per day. An adjacent neighborhood has received
no electricity for the past four days, another iftar guest
asserted.

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The Next Battle: Shi'a on Shi'a
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6. (C) The GOI certainly cannot count on a united Shi'a
constituency as a pillar of support, the Ayatollah observed.
ISCI, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraqi, the Shi'a
political party prevalent in Iraq's south, is now "cursed (by
the people) as they used to curse Saddam," the Ayatollah
claimed. Ammar al-Hakim, the heir apparent to his ailing
father Abdelaziz, is now derisively referred to as 'Uday,
after Saddam's brutish late son. Sadr noted that Maliki's
Da'wa party meanwhile is stepping up its efforts to reach out
to tribal figures in the South. While Sunni-Shi'a tensions
continue to simmer, the Ayatollah noted, Shi'a-Shi'a conflict
is the next item to explode.


6. (C) The Ayatollah further warned that Iran was increasing
its penetration of the Iraqi political/security scene. He
viewed the Badr Corps as little more than a Shi'a militia
backed by Iran. Badr is, he asserted, muscling into areas of
the South, particularly Basra and Maysan provinces, to fill
the void left by the decline of Muqtada Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
(Separately, another guest at the iftar insisted to poloff
that Iranian intelligence maintained stations, usually
disguised as "research centers," across the city of Baghdad,
including one two doors down from his house.)

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Don't Count Out Sadrists
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7. (C) Reprising his disappointment with the USG's
performance in Iraq, the Ayatollah lamented perceived U.S.
inconsistencies in its pursuit of the rule of law. Sometimes
the U.S. insists on precise enforcement of the law, sometimes
it ignores it altogether, he charged. He believed the U.S.
had badly mishandled the Muqtada al-Sadr file, poorly timing
its issuance of an arrest warrant in 2003 and then failing to
carry it out. The Sadrist movement, though in decline, was
not extinct. The Office of the Martyr Sadr, the Jaysh
al-Mahdi's political counterpart organization, remained
influential in Sadr City, and in fact tacitly controlled the
various GOI development projects in the sprawling slum area.

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Solidarity with Mithal Alousi
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8. (C) Ayatollah as-Sadr also raised with us the case of
Mithal Alousi, the secular and independent member of
parliament recently castigated by his colleagues for making a
trip to Israel. Concerned by parliament's lifting of his
immunity from prosecution (for allegedly violating a
Saddam-era law which prohibits travel to "enemy" countries),
the Ayatollah urged the U.S. to intervene. PMIN assured the
Ayatollah that the Embassy had already acted on Alousi's
behalf, warning the Prime Minister's Office that this case,
with dubious legal grounding, threatened to severely damage
the GOI's standing in Washington, and specifically cautioning
the government against dismissing his GOI-provided security
detail. The Ayatollah expressed satisfaction with U.S.
actions on Alousi's behalf.

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Comment
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9. (C) A longtime Embassy friend and interlocutor, we found
Ayatollah Hussein more pointedly critical of the USG than he
has been in the past. His criticism of the U.S. plans is of
course mainly driven by his lack of confidence in the Maliki
government, and its ability to survive absent comprehensive
U.S. security backing. Particularly coming from a leading
Shi'a cleric, his worry about U.S. plans to ramp down its
security mission is striking - it reminded us of the alarmed
tone of the Shaykh Abdelghafur Sammarai'e, the senior Sunni
cleric in Iraq whom we visited last week. Both men have no
formal role in politics but have networks that extend out
into neighborhoods of Baghdad and beyond and have ready
access to senior Iraqi officials. End comment.
CROCKER