Demosophia

Sadr's Kangaroo Court: A Test of Legitimacy

It appears that Sadr's militia have been holding court and issuing sentences (up to, and including death sentences) in the "holy city" of Najaf. According to an AP source:

Al-Sadr's office in Najaf had set up the court, which ordered arrests and meted out punishments outside of religious and legal authorities. Local Iraqi officials have in the past demanded it be shut down and all its prisoners freed.

Police said the bodies belonged to the victims of the court. But a court official, who identified himself only as Hashim, said the corpses belonged to militants killed in the recent fighting in the city.

The two-story courthouse is made up of 15 rooms filled with desks, computers and books. The bodies were located in an open air area within the courthouse compound.

Half the skull of one of the dead men was missing and another man appeared to have suffered massive wounds to his stomach. None of the bodies was dismembered, save one, which had been beheaded, though it was unclear how.

During the fighting, the militants had set up their own informal health clinics and morgues. The U.S. military has said it killed hundreds of militants in the fighting, though the militants say their casualty figure was far lower.

The courts have arrested and interrogated hundreds of people on charges including selling alcohol and peddling music deemed immoral. Punishments included flagellation.(Hat tip: My Pet Jawa)

Regardless of whether the bodies represent executions it's clear that Sadr, like the Nazis prior to the overthrow of the Weimar, have set up their own "shadow government" competing with the Allawi regime. If one needs a precursor indication, or "early warning," of the success of failure of the new Iraqi government here is a prime example, for the legitimacy of a regime rests on a monopoly of force to punish infractions of law, and no government can tolerate vigilante justice, especially by a powerful political actor. Somehow the new regime must bring the people responsible for this court to justice, and must punish therm according to the laws of the state. If they can't do that then you can expect further erosions of the legitimacy (right to rule) of the Allawi interim government, and ulitamely the failure of the democratic experiment in the Arab Middle East. Reference, for comparison, the "Whisky Rebellion" and the "Alien and Sedition Acts" which were the first tests of the legitimacy of the (at the time) new experiment in democracy, in America. We can get an inkling of the future by looking at the present.

In the case of the Whiskey Rebellion the challenge was direct, and required a monopoly of force to quell the rebellion and establish the right to rule. Four years later the Alien and Sedition Acts were inaugurated to quell what was thought to be a threat from within allied to an external threat (France). In the latter case the resolution came in the form of an electoral contest and a peaceful transition of power, with pardons. Of the two the Whiskey Rebellion is probably the closer analogy to the Najaf situation, although to some extent Sadr can be seen as an Iranian proxy. I suspect the resolution must be a combination of "force and choice" and it'll be a difficult balancing act for the interim government, to say the least.

Posted by Demosophist at August 27, 2004 05:34 PM | TrackBack