For the world’s 300 million Shia Muslims, Najaf, a dusty city in central Iraq, is the gateway to paradise: to be buried there is a privilege. Today Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s senior religious leaders, will enjoy that privilege when his mortal remains are laid to rest near the tomb of Ali, the first imam of the faith.

Hakim’s death in a terrorist attack in Najaf last Friday is a major loss for the Shias, who comprise 60 per cent of the Iraqi population. He represented a new generation of mullahs who believe that Islam should engage with other cultures, rather than sulk on the sidelines or throw bombs. Hakim had hoped to continue in the tradition of such grand ayatollahs as his late father Muhsen al-Hakim who opposed the participation of the clergy in government.

While the shock of Hakim’s death could take a long time to absorb in religious terms, its political consequences have been exaggerated. His murder does not mean that the political moderates are weakened; it won’t give more power to religious hardliners; nor, though he was important to US plans, will it scupper the formation of a new Iraqi government.

Ayatollah al-Hakim was the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), the largest anti-Saddam movement. He had assumed that position after his brother Mahdi, a Sciri founder, was murdered by Saddam’s agents in 1988. Even then, Ayatollah al-Hakim was careful not to become too absorbed in politics to endanger his religious status. He left the effective leadership of the party, and the command of its military wing, the Badr Brigade, to his younger brother Abdel-Aziz, now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council.

So those who hoped that Hakim’s murder would break Sciri are likely to be disappointed. In the 1980s and 1990s Saddam murdered 28 members of the Hakim family, including five of Ayatollah al-Hakim’s brothers, but he failed to crush its spirit of resistance. The Sciri was never a one-man show. But Ayatollah al-Hakim’s death increases pressure on the religious hierarchy in Najaf, especially the Grand Ayatollah Ali Muhammad Sistani, the primus inter pares of Shia clerics in Iraq. Sistani faces a dilemma. His theological position, a form of quietism, is based on the principle that religion and politics must have distinct spaces.

Right now, however, Iraqi Shias need leadership that can come only from religious figures. This is why Sistani published a statement yesterday calling on Shias to play a greater role in ensuring the security of the country in co-operation with the coalition. Despite the gloomy impression given by the Western media, it is important to recognise that not one of the five major Shia parties wants the US to leave: in fact, all agree that they need the US Armed Forces. Sciri leaders I talked to yesterday insisted that there would be no change in the strategy of co-operation with the US-led coalition.

That strategy, however, is in trouble. It is not because Iraqis want the Yankees to go home; or because al-Qaeda and the Baathist rump are unbeatable. The cause of the trouble is outside Iraq’s borders. The first is the Bush Administration’s failure to end its internal squabbles and present a coherent policy. Iraq’s political elite is being divided into supporters of Colin Powell and the State Department, and the Rumsfeldians who enjoy the support of the Pentagon.

Outside Iraq, the Powell camp is desperately trying to bring in as many flags as possible by giving the UN a role that it is not equipped to play in this difficult period of transition. The Rumsfeldians, for their part, are reluctant to have any flags other than that of the US and the UK, and reject even what the UN can do best, which is to help with humanitarian aid.

In some cases, such as the “abolition” of the Iraqi army, Washington acted with haste and arrogance. In other cases, such as barring anyone who ever had a Baath party card from holding office, it has been duped by returning exiles who wish to settle old scores.

Washington has also been stingy in spending on urgently needed public services. At the same time the Americans have raised Iraqi expectations and created a “room-service mentality”. Iraqis in Baghdad moan about the US failure to provide round-the-clock electricity, new jobs, better schools and hospitals, and democracy, all in just four months. But not even the grumpy Baghdadis want the US to leave now: they know that the coalition’s presence is protecting Iraq against predatory neighbours and ensuring that there are no revenge killings, ethnic conflicts, or religious wars.

Iraq has become a codename for the disputes of domestic British and US politics. Those who dislike Tony Blair and/or George Bush, for reasons that have nothing to do with Iraq, amplify every act of terrorism to score points and sap political will. But the fact is that Iraq, since liberation, has witnessed only 21 terrorist attacks. This is not a high figure by the region’s bloody standards. Baghdad is not what war-shattered Beirut was in its time and, even now, is a safer place to move about in than Algiers or Karachi.

Iraqis know that there are only two sides. On the one side are those who would stop at nothing to plunge Iraq into chaos in the hope of restoring the fallen regime or replacing it with another despotic moustache. Supported by Islamist terrorist groups, these elements have attacked the UN headquarters and the Jordanian Embassy and have killed far more Iraqi civilians than American and British troops.

On the opposite side there are those who wish to root out what is left of Saddam’s tyranny. With all its shortcomings and mistakes, Iraqis know that this side deserves support if their country is to become a beacon of light in one of the last remaining corners of darkness in the world.

The author is an Iranian commentator on Middle Eastern affairs

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