NAJAF, Iraq – The biggest wild card facing U.S. troops in Iraq is the Shiite factor.

So far, attacks on U.S. forces come mainly from diehard Saddam supporters in Sunni Muslim areas. But nearly 60 percent of Iraqis are Shiite Muslims, and many follow the lead of their religious establishment, or hawza, based in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf.

The moderate ayatollahs who lead the hawza have left the door open for good relations with the United States – with big caveats. But there are younger, more radical clerics in the slums of Baghdad itching to challenge the occupying forces.

To hear the hawza’s concerns, I visited Najaf, a crumbling city of narrow alleyways and pilgrim hotels.

“It is possible to have a good relationship between the American and Iraqi peoples,” I was told by Ayatollah Muhammad Said al-Hakim, one of four ayatollahs who run the hawza by dint of their scholarship and religious following.

The 37-year-old Hakim, in black turban and robe, received me in a bare room in the narrow Najaf rowhouse near the shrine, where petitioners come to seek religious rulings.

“We are interested that there be no friction between the American troops and the Iraqi people,” Hakim said. The hawza has instructed believers not to attack U.S. forces. Radical clerics have agreed – so far – to respect these “red lines.”

“Iraqi Shia are different from Iranian Shia,” Hakim continued. The hawza doesn’t support the Iranian notion of “velayet e-faqih – clerical supremacy – promoted by Iran’s revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.

“We support religious and spiritual authority, but we don’t want to get any political power,” Hakim stated.

The Najaf hawza’s quietist philosophy leaves the door open for a pluralistic Iraqi government and lessens fears that Iraqi elections will produce a theocracy.

But here come the caveats.

This window for good relations between Iraqi Shiites and Americans depends on whether U.S. forces “act in the right way” toward Iraq. “America is an occupying force,” Hakim says, “and no one is happy with occupying forces.

“The Americans have promised that the period of their occupation is limited. …The Americans must give the Iraqi public the opportunity to elect a new Iraqi government as soon as possible. There is no other reason for them to be here in Iraq.”

In other words, the hawza has limited patience with proposals for a long-term occupation, or current U.S. plans to postpone Iraqi elections. The leading hawza cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has just issued a fatwa condemning U.S. plans to appoint an Iraqi body to draft a new constitution, saying it should be elected.

Najafis are also angry that U.S. occupation authorities in Baghdad canceled Najaf’s city elections (which had been organized, ironically, by the local U.S. military commander in the city). U.S. authorities in Baghdad apparently worried that the voters might choose a mayor from a political party thought to be under Iranian influence.

But postponing any form of direct election will only strengthen the hand of clerics who want to challenge the hawza. Prime among them: followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, son of a popular ayatollah murdered by Saddam in 1999. The young Sadr espouses an activist brand of Islam at odds with the hawza. He has tens of thousands of followers in the slums of Baghdad.

Hakim is bluntly disdainful of young Sadr, who “is not a religious scholar … and has no right to represent the hawza.”

But what can U.S. officials do to undercut Sadr’s appeal?

Improve security in the slums and offer public works jobs. Set up a local Iraqi TV station that can counter vile rumors that U.S. forces are kidnapping or ogling Shiite women. And hold some form of real elections, soon, at local levels.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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