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Sadr's Rising Star to Eclipse Bush's Surge?
By Dilip Hiro
TomDispatch.com
Sunday 15 April 2007
Nightmare scenarios for the Bush
Administration.
Public opinion polls are valuable chips to play for those engaged
in a debate of national or international consequence. In the end,
however, they are abstract numbers. It is popular demonstrations which
give them substance, color, and - above all - wide media exposure, and
make them truly meaningful. This is particularly true when such marches
are peaceful and disciplined in a war-ravaged country like Iraq.
This indeed was the case with the demonstration on April 9 in
Najaf. Over a million Iraqis, holding aloft thousands of national flags,
marched, chanting, "Yes, yes, Iraq/No, no, America" and "No,
no,
American/Leave, leave occupier."
The demonstrators arrived from all over the country in response to
a call by Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, to demand an end to
foreign occupation on the fourth anniversary of the end of Baathist rule
in Baghdad.
Both the size of the demonstration and its composition were
unprecedented. "There are people here from all different parties and
sects," Hadhim al-Araji, Sadr's representative in Baghdad's Kadhimiya
district, told reporters. "We are all carrying the national flag, a
symbol of unity. And we are all united in calling for the withdrawal of
the Americans."
The presence of many senior Sunni clerics at the head of the march,
which started from Sadr's mosque in Kufa, a nearby town, and the absence
of any sectarian flags or images in the parade, underlined the
ecumenical nature of the protest.
Crucially, the mammoth demonstration reflected the view prevalent
among Iraqi lawmakers. Last autumn, 170 of them in a 275-member
Parliament, signed a motion, demanding to know the date of a future
American withdrawal. The discomfited government of Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki played a procedural trick by referring the subject to a
parliamentary committee, thereby buying time.
Opinion polls conducted since then show three-quarters of Iraqi
respondents demanding the withdrawal of the Anglo-American troops within
six to twelve months.
What Makes Sadr Tick?
Though in his early thirties and only a hojatalislam ("proof
of Islam") - one rank below an ayatollah in the Shiite religious
hierarchy - Muqtada al-Sadr has pursued a political strategy no other
Iraqi politician can match.
The sources of his ever-expanding appeal are: his pedigree, his
fierce nationalism, his shrewd sense of when to confront the occupying
power and when to lie low, and his adherence to the hierarchical order
of the Shiite sect, topped by a grand ayatollah - at present
73-year-old Ali Sistani - whose opinion or decree must be accepted by
all those below him. (For his part, Sistani does not criticize any
Shiite leader.)
Muqtada's father, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and two
elder brothers were assassinated outside a mosque in Najaf in February
1999 by the henchmen of President Saddam Hussein. The Grand Ayatollah
had defied Saddam by issuing a religious decree calling on Shiites to
attend Friday prayers in mosques. The Iraqi dictator, paranoid about
large Shiite gatherings, feared these would suddenly turn violently
anti-regime.
Muqtada then went underground - just as he did recently in the
face of the Bush administration's "surge" plan - resurfacing only
after
the Baathist regime fell in April 2003; and Saddam City, the vast slum
of Baghdad, with nearly 2 million Shiite residents, was renamed Sadr
City. As the surviving son of the martyred family of a grand ayatollah,
Muqtada was lauded by most Shiites.
While welcoming the demise of the Baathist regime, Sadr
consistently opposed the continuing occupation of his country by
Anglo-American forces. When Paul Bremer, the American viceroy in Iraq,
banned his magazine Al Hawza al Natiqa ("The Vocal Seminary")
in
April 2004 and American soldiers fired on his followers protesting
peacefully against the publication's closure, Sadr called for "armed
resistance" to the occupiers.
Uprisings spread from Sadr City to the southern Iraqi holy cities
of Najaf and Karbala as well as four other cities to the south. More
than 540 civilians died in the resulting battles and skirmishes. Since
the American forces were then also battling Sunni insurgents in Falluja,
Bremer let the ban on the magazine lapse and dropped his plan to arrest
Sadr.
Later, Sadr fell in line with the wishes of Grand Ayatollah Ali
Sistani to see all Shiite religious groups gather under one umbrella to
contest the upcoming parliamentary election. His faction allied with two
other Shiite religious parties - the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Al Daawa al Islamiya (the Islamic Call)
- to form the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).
By so doing, in the face of American hostility, Sadr gave
protective political cover to his faction and its armed wing, called the
Mahdi Army. (U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington have long viewed
Sadr and his militia as the greatest threat to American interests in
Iraq.) Of the 38 ministers in Maliki's cabinet, six belong to the
Sadrist group.
When the Pentagon mounted its latest security plan for Baghdad on
February 13 - aiming to crush both the Sunni insurgents and Shiite
militias - Sadr considered discretion the better part of valor. He
ordered his Mahdi militiamen to get off the streets and hide their
weapons. For the moment, they were not to resist American forays into
Shiite neighborhoods. He then went incommunicado.
Muqtada's decision to avoid bloodshed won plaudits not only from
Iraqi politicians but also, discreetly, from Sistani, who decries
violence, and whose commitment to bringing about the end of the foreign
occupation of Iraq is as strong as Sadr's - albeit not as vocal.
In a message to the nation, on the eve of the fourth anniversary of
the demise of Saddam's Baathist regime, Sadr coupled his order to the
Mahdi fighters to intensify their campaign to expel the Anglo-American
troops with a call to the Iraqi security forces to join the struggle to
defeat "the arch enemy - America." He urged them to cease targeting
Iraqis and direct their anger at the occupiers.
It was the Mahdi Army - controlling the shrine of Imam Ali, the
founder of Shiite Islam, in the holy city of Najaf - that battled the
American troops to a standstill in August 2004. The impasse lasted a
fortnight, during which large parts of Najaf's old city were reduced to
rubble, with the government of the U.S.-appointed Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi, favorite Iraqi exile of the CIA and the State Department as well
as leader of the exiled Iraqi National Accord, failing to defuse it.
By contrast, it took Sistani - freshly back in Najaf, his home
base, from London after eye surgery - a single session with Sadr over
dinner to resolve the crisis. A compromise emerged. The Mahdi army ceded
control of the holy shrine not to the Americans or their Iraqi cohorts
but to Sistani's representatives, and both Mahdi militiamen and U.S.
troops left the city.
The Towering Sistani
Ali Sistani established his nationalist credentials early on. As
the invading American forces neared Najaf on March 25, 2003, he issued a
religious decree requiring all Muslims to resist the invading "infidel"
troops. Once the Anglo-American forces occupied Iraq, he adamantly
refused to meet American or British officials or their emissaries, and
continues to do so to this day.
In January 2004, when Washington favored appointing a hand-picked
body of Iraqis, guided by American experts, to draft the Iraqi
constitution along secular, democratic, and capitalist lines, Sistani
decided to act. He called on the faithful to demonstrate for an elected
Parliament, which would then be charged with drafting the constitution -
and he succeeded.
Sistani then issued a religious decree calling on the faithful to
participate in the vote to create a representative assembly committed to
achieving the exit of foreign troops though peaceful means. The Bush
White House, however, exploited Sistani's move as part of its own
"democracy promotion" campaign in Iraq, with Iraqi fingers dipped
in
inedible purple ink becoming its much flaunted "democracy symbol."
When Allawi began dithering about holding the vote for an interim
parliament by January 2005, as stipulated by United Nations Security
Council Resolution 1546, Sistani warned that he would call for popular
non-cooperation with the occupying powers if it was not held on time. In
the elections that followed, the United Iraqi Alliance - the
brain-child of Sistani - emerged as the majority group and thus the
leading designer of the new constitution. Respecting Sistani's views,
the Iraqi constitution stipulated that Sharia (Islamic law)
was
to be the principal source of Iraqi legislation and that no law would be
passed that violated the undisputed tenets of Islam.
In the December 2005 parliamentary general election under the new
constitution, the UIA became the largest group, a mere 10 seats short of
a majority. Though Ibrhaim Jaafari of Al Daawa won the contest for UIA
leadership by one vote, he was rejected as prime minister by the Kurdish
parties, holding the parliament's swing votes, as well as by Washington
and London. A crisis paralyzed the government. Once again, Sistani's
intercession defused a crisis. He persuaded Jaafari to step down.
Jaafari's successor, Maliki, is as reverential toward Sistani as
other Shiite leaders. For instance, in December 2006, when American
officials reportedly urged Maliki to postpone Saddam Hussein's execution
until after the religious holiday of Eid Al Adha (the Festival of
Sacrifice), Maliki turned to Sistani. The Grand Ayatollah favored an
immediate execution. And so it came to pass.
Sistani's next blow fell on the Bush administration earlier this
month. He let be known his disapproval of Washington-backed legislation
to allow thousands of former Baath Party members to resume their public
service positions. That undermined one of the White House's pet projects
in Iraq - an attempt to entice into the political mainstream part of
the alienated Sunni minority that is at the heart of the Iraqi insurgency.
In sum, while refraining from participating in everyday politics,
Sistani intervenes on the issues of paramount importance to the Iraqi
people, as he sees them. Western journalists, who routinely describe him
as belonging to the "quietist school" of Shiite Islam (at odds with
the
"interventionist school"), are therefore off the mark. Given Sistani's
uncompromising opposition to the presence of foreign troops in Iraq, his
staunch nationalism, and the unmatched reverence that he evokes,
particularly among the majority Shiites, he poses a greater long-term
threat to Washington's interests in Iraq than Muqtada al-Sadr; and, far
from belonging to opposite schools of Shiite Islam, Sadr and Sistani,
both staunch nationalists, complement each other - much to the puzzled
frustration of the Bush White House.
What must worry Washington more than the massive size of the
demonstration on April 9 was its mixed Shiite-Sunni composition and
nationalistic ambience. The prospect of Sadr's appeal extending to a
section of the Sunni community, with the tacit support of Sistani, is
the nightmare scenario that the Bush administration most dreads. Yet it
may come to pass.
--------
Dilip Hiro is the author of Secrets and Lies: "Operation
Iraqi
Freedom" and After and, most recently, Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World's
Vanishing
Oil Resources
(Nation Books).
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