Baghdad responded to violent clashes between armed militants and Iraqi army forces in the critical Shiite province of Karbala on Wednesday. The fighting, which occurred near the holy city of Karbala, eventually required the central government to respond with helicopter attacks and additional forces. This response to militant activity has become almost commonplace for embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's beleaguered central government since Sunni militants led by the Islamic State overran the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The July 2 clashes break with the fighting of the previous weeks, however, as they were between pro-government forces and renegade militia supporters of radical Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Hasani al-Sarkhi.
Al-Sarkhi is not a new problem for Iraq's Shiite leadership. He has rejected the traditional religious and spiritual leadership for the Iraqi (and worldwide) Shiite community based in Najaf, led by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Al-Sarkhi's followers (which he claims number 25,000-30,000) have also clashed with U.S. forces, Iran's political and religious leaders and the central government in Baghdad. Al-Sarkhi's group represents a combination of Iraqi and Iranian Shiite beliefs, while ultimately rejecting the authority of the religious communities in both Najaf and the Iranian center of Shiite study in Qom.
Al-Sarkhi's followers want a theocratic Shiite government in Iraq that ascribes to the principle of "velayat-e faqih," or rule by clerics, similar to the system in Iran. This principle remains hotly contested by Shiite theologians outside Iran, but especially by al-Sistani. Despite believing in the tenets behind the Iranian system of government, al-Sarkhi also espouses strong Arab nationalist views, utterly rejecting what he and his followers describe as the undue Iranian influence over the inherently Arab Iraqi state. In this way he represents a more extreme form of opposition than other, better-known Iraqi Shiite competitors to al-Maliki, such as the clerics Ammar al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr.
Divisions within Iraq's Shiite community have plagued the political system in Baghdad since the fall of Saddam Hussein. These divisions are also actively encouraged and maintained by Iran, whose desire to see a Shiite-led government in Baghdad is matched only by its geopolitical imperative to prevent too strong a power — no matter its sectarian affiliation — from taking root in Mesopotamia. Al-Sarkhi's current conflict with Baghdad and Najaf center on his opposition to al-Sistani's call for southern Iraq's powerful Shiite militias to rise up and aid the central government in its offensive against the Sunni-led groups operating in large swaths of territory to the west and north of Baghdad.
The central government's response to al-Sarkhi's protests and roadblocks in Karbala today was, by necessity, swift and unequivocal. Karbala is an important pilgrimage site but also marks the border between Iraqi's Sunni tribes and the southern Shiite core, where the bulk of Iraq's oil reserves are located.
Rather than risking energy production, however, al-Sarkhi's defiance points to larger challenges facing Baghdad in the future. Al-Maliki's government and its Iranian sponsors have allowed competition within the Iraqi Shiite establishment to persist under careful management, but have striven to ensure a few fundamentals remain in place: a Shiite, rather than exclusively Arab, nationalist ideology (a particular hallmark of Muqtada al-Sadr's appeal to voters); strong financial or religious links to Iran; and a largely unified position against Iraq's Sunni Arab and Kurdish minorities. Al-Sarkhi's movement falls largely outside of these parameters. Of greater concern to Baghdad and Tehran is the ability of al-Sarkhi's pro-Arab, anti-Iran and anti-Sistani views to find common cause with minority forces in Iraq that are currently grappling with Baghdad for greater authority.
These intra-community divisions have also been one of al-Maliki's — and by extension Iran's and Baghdad's — key tools in managing opposition from Sunni Arab tribes and Iraqi Kurds. Both Baghdad and Iran have shown that they will be quick to try and prevent these internal Shiite divisions from benefitting their opponents as well.
Al-Sarkhi's forces — the so-called Husayn Army — largely have been routed from Karbala, and the cleric and his forces have reconvened at his stronghold in Nasiriyah in the southern Iraqi province of Dhi Qar. The risk of Baghdad's increased reliance on southern Shiite militia support in its fight against the Islamic State has brought with it greater political risks, including al-Maliki's traditional opponents — al-Hakim and al-Sadr — demanding a greater share of power. But as al-Sarkhi's actions show, Baghdad's greatest threats from the south could come from outside Iran's carefully managed proxies, representing a threat not just to Iraq but Iran as well.
