03/04/06: Iraqi Violence, U.S. Policy Strain White House Ties With Shiites

Wall Street Journal- March 4, 2006

Iraqi Violence, U.S. Policy Strain
White House Ties With Shiites

By YOCHI J. DREAZENMarch 4, 2006; Page A4

DEARBORN, Mich. -- Shiite Muslims here and in Iraq have long been strong supporters of the U.S. effort to topple Saddam Hussein, but the destruction of a revered Shiite shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra on Feb. 22 is straining the Shiites' relationship with the Bush administration.

Hours after the bombing, hundreds of exiled Shiites jammed a local community center here to condemn the bombing and those responsible. Speakers argued that U.S. failures were responsible for the violence against Shiite civilian targets. Standing in front of large pictures of the heavily damaged mosque, Imam Mohammed Elahi of the Islamic House of Wisdom said the attack was a "big embarrassment for the administration" and demanded that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad "do a better job of being part of the solution rather than part of the problem."

Many exiled Shiite leaders in the U.S. are becoming increasingly pointed in their criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the war as conditions in Iraq deteriorate. Echoing the complaints of Shiite leaders inside Iraq, the critics accuse the U.S. of failing to provide security or basic services to ordinary Iraqis and of trying to appease Sunni Muslim militants in Iraq by forcing the country's Shiite leadership to make political concessions.

"People tried to be as patient as possible when it comes to criticism of the administration because of how much they hated Saddam," Mr. Elahi says. "But even people who supported the war 100% are very frustrated and saddened by what is happening daily now. They see that, despite all the troops and all the money, security is getting worse and not better."

Imam Hassan Qazwini, a scion of the Shiite religious aristocracy whose Islamic Center of America hosted the event protesting the destruction of Samarra's Golden Mosque, says he fears the administration's Iraq policies have taken on an increasingly anti-Shiite tenor.

Mr. Qazwini says his anger spiked recently because of what he sees as open American interference with the internal affairs of the Shiite-led Iraqi government. A native of Iraq, Mr. Qazwini says it was wrong for American Ambassador to Iraq Zhalmay Khalilzad to accuse the Shiite-dominated security forces of assassinating and torturing Sunnis suspected of links to the insurgency and to demand that Shiite political leaders give Sunnis powerful posts in Iraq's next government.

"Mr. Khalilzad is playing with fire by lobbying to bring these terrorists into the government," he says. "America has no business interfering with the freedom of the Iraqi government and no right to appease the terrorists and those who don't believe in democracy."

Mr. Qazwini also says he thinks reports of Shiite death squads and torture facilities are exaggerated, even though many of the most detailed allegations have come directly from American military officials on the ground in Iraq.

Mr. Qazwini, whose mosque is the largest in the U.S., attended separate meetings with President Bush and then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz near the start of the 2003 invasion and says he supported the ouster of Mr. Hussein. But he says he was ambivalent about the war and quickly began to fear that the U.S. lacked a clear postinvasion plan. Those concerns, he says, grew when the U.S. disbanded the Iraqi army, sending thousands of well-armed men into the arms of the insurgency, and failed to seal Iraq's borders to prevent the infiltration of insurgents and weaponry.

In Michigan's political landscape, Arab-American voters constitute a voting bloc estimated at 130,000 to 400,000. In the 2000 presidential election, these Arab-Americans, who have traditionally voted Democratic, split their votes evenly between the two main parties, giving President Bush a boost. Nationally, the Arab-American community favored Mr. Bush two to one. (Most Iraqis in the U.S. are either Shiite or Christian; there are few exiled Sunnis.)

By the 2004 election, however, anger over the wars on terrorism and in Iraq led to overwhelming Arab-American support here for Democratic challenger John Kerry, according to Amaney Jamal, an expert on American Muslims at Princeton University. "There was so much anger at Bush that Kerry received the support almost automatically," she said.

It is a far cry from the run-up to the March 2003 invasion, when Iraqi-Americans were largely supportive of the Bush administration's efforts to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Leaders here say there are many reasons for the community's mounting criticism of the administration. Initially, they were disgusted by the abuses at the American-run prison in Abu Ghraib, and they believed that the war on terror unfairly targeted Muslim men. But now, many Arab-Americans say their main reasons are the anger and frustration they feel about the U.S.'s inability to bring matters in Iraq under control.

"I've heard many say they regret their support for their war," says Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. "Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant, but the shock-and-awe campaign of the American military has begotten the worst violence and extremism that Iraq has ever seen."

Juan Cole, an expert on Iraq at the University of Michigan, says the relationship between Muslims in Michigan and the Bush administration was "always a marriage of convenience" between exiles desperate to see Mr. Hussein ousted and a White House eager to solidify domestic support by casting the war as a chance to liberate an oppressed nation. "All along, there was a certain lack of sincerity in their embrace of the Bush administration," he says.

Nibbling from a tray of small pastries in his tidy office here, Mr. Qazwini says local Shiite religious leaders are in discussions about forming delegations that could travel to Washington to relay the community's concerns to American officials there. Mr. Qazwini says he also hopes to see public protests outside the White House and State Department calling attention to the American responsibility for the deteriorating conditions inside Iraq.

"We feel that we have been betrayed by the U.S," he says. "And we can no longer remain silent about it."