I just finished reading an incredible article by Matthew Duss regarding Shia influence in Iraq and how that has related to the recent SOFA agreement. The original article is posted here. Matthew sums it up better than I could and makes a lot of good points that I have been trying to push for sometime now. I have nothing to add, nothing to take away, the article speaks for itself. That being said, I would like to cross-post it here (with some of my own added emphasis) to get our readers take and comment as well.

In the never-ending battle to define and redefine the terms of the Iraq debate, President Bush and conservative supporters of the war have rallied to portray the recent signing of the security agreement between the U.S. and Iraqi governments as a milestone for freedom.

Speaking to the Brookings Institution on Dec. 5, Bush announced, "Iraq has gone from an enemy of America to a friend of America, from sponsoring terror to fighting terror, and from a brutal dictatorship to a multi-religious, multi-ethnic constitutional democracy." That same week, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer declared the security agreement "a defeat for Tehran," because the "the ostensibly pro-Iranian religious Shiite parties resisted Tehran's pressure and championed the agreement."

But examining the debate within Iraq over the security agreement reveals who has power in the new Iraq and shows that the claims of the war's supporters are -- as usual -- less than accurate.

Shias make up more than 60 percent of Iraqis, and the new Iraqi order is, unsurprisingly, largely Shia-controlled. Significantly, the parties that dominate Iraqi Shia politics -- the Islamic Da'wa Party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), and the Sadrists -- are all Islamist parties. Each advocates a society based upon Islamic principles, and each seeks and takes guidance from a small number of ayatollahs in and out of Iraq. In October, as negotiations between the United States and Iraq over the status of forces agreement appeared close to a finish, prominent Shia ayatollahs demonstrated their influence on Iraq's politics -- and thus on the U.S. presence in Iraq -- when they issued fatwas (legal-religious decrees) regarding the disposition of the agreement.

Over the last two years, as Maliki's government has worked to consolidate its rule and increase its legitimacy, one of the semi-official procedures has been "the Najaf visit." When the government is considering matters of great import, Maliki or his representatives pay a call to a small apartment located on one of Najaf's dusty side streets, the home of Iraq's most prominent cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. After the ayatollah has been consulted, a brief press conference is usually held outside, where the substance of the meeting -- carrying Sistani's imprimatur -- is relayed to reporters.

The US press has done a wonderful job of failing to report anything in regards to the Iranian influence in Iraq, or the increased political power that OIF has granted the Shia.

This ritual was repeated throughout the negotiations over the security agreement, just as it has been since the earliest days of the U.S. occupation. In early July, as Bush administration officials were downplaying talk of timetables and withdrawals, Iraqi National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie used a post-consultation presser to insist that Iraq "would not accept any memorandum of understanding with [the U.S.] side that has no obvious and specific dates for the foreign troops' withdrawal from Iraq." The timing and location of the statement -- immediately after a meeting with Sistani, in front of Sistani's home -- made clear both to Iraqis and to the Bush administration that the ayatollah had, in effect, spoken.

In response to these religious edicts, the security agreement was resubmitted by Iraqi negotiators. Among the changes made was stronger language in regard to U.S. withdrawal -- including retitling the pact "agreement on withdrawal of U.S. forces" - as well as prohibition against using Iraq as a staging ground for attacks on Iraq's neighbors. The power of these ayatollahs over Iraq's politics, such that they could threaten to scuttle an agreement of significant import to the security of the United States, throws into stark relief what the Bush administration has helped to create in Iraq: a government dominated by Shia religious parties that take their guidance -- and derive their legitimacy -- from the opinions and edicts of a small handful of conservative Shia clerics.

To understand the context within which the agreement was negotiated -- and the considerable power of Shia religious leaders -- it's necessary to review some history. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's party, the Da'wa ('Islamic call'), is the oldest of Iraq's Shia parties. The Da'wa grew out of the intellectual ferment of the seminary city of Najaf in the 1950s and 1960s, during which a new wave of religious activists competed with secular leaders to define the politics of Iraq's Shia community. The most significant intellectual figure in Najaf's scholarly renaissance was Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr (a distant cousin and father-in-law of Muqtada), who advocated a more activist role for clerics, as well as the more formal institutionalization of Shia religious leadership. His theories about the place of religion in society underpin all of the leading Shia parties today. Sadr's activism stood in contrast to the relatively apolitical tradition of the Najaf clerical establishment -- known as the Hawza -- a tension that remains to this day.

The rave assessments of the state of Iraqi politics coming from the administration and its supporters are unsurprising. Their professional reputations -- and Bush's presidential legacy -- are inextricably tied to that country, and thus they will spend the remainder of their careers testifying to its success, regardless of events on the ground. But we know now that a lack of understanding of Iraq and the region -- and the attendant misjudgment of the role that American military power could play in its transformation -- helped to lead the U.S. into disaster. And as long as a misapprehension of the current political and religious trends continues to cloud our understanding of Iraq, American leaders will have a difficult time finding the appropriate policy for dealing with it.