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Reading Juan Cole every day really puts a crimp in my well-known "the glass is half full" attitude.

Today is no exception (unfortunately, his links are still screwed up). After reading him it is clear that we are up to our necks in a situation that we, as the occupying (yess, Zell, you heard me) force can not possibly understand or deal with.

Al-Zaman: Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called on Wednesday for general elections to be held at the scheduled time (January 2005). He made the statement during a meeting of the Shiite leadership held in his office in Najaf. Present were Muhammad Said al-Hakim, Bashir Najafi, and Ishaq al-Fayyad in adition to Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Sistani underlined the necessity of "tossing out conflicts and emphasizing a closing of ranks, as well as intensifying efforts to create complete national unity in order to confront the danger that menaces the country." Sistani called on the caretaker Iraqi government to take measures to release prisoners whose guilt has not been established, and to work to rebuild the cities that were damaged by the acts of violence and clashes. He asked for compensation to be given to those harmed, especially in the city of Najaf. He also called on the government to "treat problems with calm and wisdom instead of resorting to violence." (All this according to Deutsche Press Agentur). Al-Hayat says Sistani called on Allawi to "stop the bloodbath." He further insisted on more popular participation and on "filling in the gaps in the laws governing elections and parties" that were enacted by US civil administrator Paul Bremer and his appointed Interim Governing Council.

There are rumors that PM Iyad Allawi had wanted to storm the shrine of Ali in late August, and had been displeased with Sistani's intervention to promote a non-violent end of the crisis.

[...]

The inclusion of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim in the meeting of the Grand Ayatollahs strikes me as extremely significant. Al-Hakim is probably only a Hujjat al-Islam, the stage below ayatollah, and so would not ordinarily be at a senior meeting. But because he heads a major political party, SCIRI, as well as its paramilitary, the Badr Corps, he seems to be being consulted by his seniors.

Al-Hakim lived in Tehran from the early 1980s until 2003 and has excellent relations with the hardliners in Iran, even though he has been cooperating with the Americans for the past two years. From summer of 2003, Sistani began allying with the al-Hakims and implicitly with SCIRI as a way of combatting the Sadrist movement, which has long had ambiguous feelings toward Sistani. The Sadrists maintain that al-Hakim and SCIRI spied on them for the Americans and encouraged the recent attack on them in Najaf. Although the Badr Corps was trained by the Revolutionary Guards in Iran and had been reputed to be formidable, so far it seems to have come off badly in any fight with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. It also seems to be the case that the Sadr movement has attracted far more followers in the past year than its rival, SCIRI, which remains a smaller movement. It is therefore not entirely clear how valuable Sistani's tacit alliance with SCIRI is to him.

Al-Hakim has most recently been in the news because he denounced the US operation in Tal Afar (a largely Shiite Turkmen city).

[...]

Meanwhile, Sorayya Sarhaddi Nelson reports that the multi-million dollar Najaf reconstruction plan involves a provision to raze buildings considered too near to the Imam Ali Shrine. Among these are the HQ offices of the Sadr Movement, i.e. of Muqtada al-Sadr. These offices had been used by Muqtada's father, revered by almost all Iraqi Shiites, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. On these grounds, the Sadrists are voicing strong opposition to the plan, as a desecration of Sadr II's memory. They say only the decree of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani would convince them.

The plan to get rid of those buildings appears to originate with US-appointed Najaf governor, Adnan al-Zurfi, whom the Sadrists view as an American agent.

And that's in the part of the country in which the U.S. has nominal control. We don't even know who we're dealing with in the Sunni areas.