Juan Cole: May 16, 2005 Part 3

Sistani Aide Killed
Shiites Demonstrate Against Kuwait, Nancy Ajram in Karbala

Two clerics, one Sunni and one Shiite, were assassinated over the weekend. Guerrillas shot down Shaikh Qasim al-Gharawi, and his nephew, Hazim Rubai, in East Baghdad as they left the shaikh's home. Al-Gharawi was a major emissary of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and was sent all over the Iraqi south with messages from Sistani to other Shiite clerics.

KarbalaNews.net reports that the Shiite Badr Organization (the paramilitary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq [SCIRI]) has identified 40 officers who served in Saddam Hussein's repressive security apparatus in various provinces, and who are now serving in the Ministry of the Interior. The new Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, is from SCIRI. Shiite members of parliament have repeatedly complained about Baathist officers serving in Interior, and have demanded that they be purged. The article names all forty. The ex-Baath officers were brought into the government by the interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi. He was a long-time CIA asset who recruited Iraqi military officers into his Iraqi National Accord in hopes of overthrowing Saddam, and presumably these officers had served as covert US agents. The religious Shiites, however, have a deep hatred of anyone who was high in the Baath Party, and seem determined to purge the Allawi appointees, even though US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has ordered them not to do so.