Review Saleem Al-Khalil, The Race Toward Najaf, Abdul Majid Al-Khoie Amidst Americans, Sistani, and Khamenei, Saleem Al-Khalil, 2024

  

Saleem Al-Khalil’s The Race Toward Najaf is about Sayid Abdul Majid al-Khoie’s murder in Najaf in 2003 shortly after the U.S. invasion by Muqtada al-Sadr. It then goes over what might’ve happened if Khoei had lived. The coverage of his death is quite good. The second part however which attempts to blame Iran for everything has huge holes in it.

 

Sayid Abdul Majid al-Khoie came from a prominent clerical family in Iraq. His father was a grand ayatollah and the leading religious scholar in the Shiite community in the 1970s until his death in 1992.

 

The U.S. reached out to him before the 2003 invasion hoping that he could convince Shiites to support the invasion. He agreed to cooperate arguing that the overthrow of Saddam was a fait accompli and Iraqis had to participate to decide the future of their country. This agreement would be one major reason why Muqtada al-Sadr who came from a rival clerical family would oppose his return and ultimately kill him.

 

The book goes into great detail about Khoei’s talks with the Americans and arrival in Iraq. He went to Najaf where he was immediately met by protests led by Sadrists ultimately resulting in them murdering him. This was considered a major event early in the U.S. occupation because it showed Sadr was intent upon using force to seize leadership of the Shiite community. Khoei’s death would later lead to two major clashes between the U.S. and Sadr during the early occupation.

 

After that Khalil’s argument gets into all kinds of problems. One is that he claims Khoei had more influence than Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who was the head cleric in Iraq in 2003. At one point he quotes Khoei saying that Sistani could be replaced. Khoei did have standing and his father’s reputation but he lived in England while Sistani had been the religious leader of the community since 1993.

 

Then Khalil tries to blame everything upon Iran. He writes that U.S. disbanding the Iraqi military and starting deBaathification were at the behest of pro-Iran Shiite political parties and Sistani who was being exploited by Tehran’s allies. Likewise Sistani wanting Shiites to take power in the 2005 elections is also put on Iran. Rather than trying to appease Iran the orders to send the Iraqi military home and get rid of Baathists originated in Washington D.C. and was not the result of Americans trying to appease Shiites under Iranian influence. Likewise Sistani’s desire to see Shiites control the Iraqi state came out of Sunnis ruling Iraq since it was created by the British in 1920. The book becomes close to a conspiracy theory in this section.

 

Iraq watchers will know about the two clashes with the Sadrists in 2004. The Race Towards Najaf attempts to explain how those were rooted in Muqtada al-Sadr’s murder of Sayid Khoei in April 2003. It’s unfortunate that the author’s speculations go off the rails trying to place the origins of the insurgency and sectarianism at the feet of the Iranians. Tehran has done many things in Iraq but these two were caused by the Americans and Iraqis.

 

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