Attack on Sadr will widen war in Iraq

Published: Sunday, 14 January, 2007, 11:01 AM Doha Time

By Patrick Cockburn

BAGHDAD: He is a strange figure to be targeted as the number one enemy of the US in Iraq. Four years ago, few had heard of the Shia nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr inside or outside Iraq. Even somebody as suspicious as Saddam Hussain did not think he would play any role in the coming crisis.

Now he holds the future of Iraq in his hands. He has far more popularity and legitimacy than many of the pro-American Iraqi leaders cowering in the Green Zone. He is seen by millions of Shia in Baghdad and across southern Iraq as their spiritual and national leader.

Rightly or wrongly, he is feared by most Sunnis as their nemesis, a physical symbol that they are battling for their existence in Iraq.

He has now become part of the White House’s demonology in Iraq. At one time the US believed that Saddam Hussain was responsible for all its problems in Iraq — problems that would be resolved once he was overthrown. Today Sadr, a 32-year-old cleric in his black robe with fierce, staring, dark eyes, is denounced as the fomenter of sectarian warfare.

Many Iraqi leaders never leave the Green Zone. Sadr has never entered it. He has a cult-like following. He controls Sadr City, the ramshackle, sprawling slum in east Baghdad which is home to 2,5mn Shia, important cities such as Kufa and provinces such as Maysan.

He can probably put 100,000 armed militiamen into the field. Much of the Baghdad police force follows him. Army barracks where Shia units are stationed have pictures of him pinned to the walls.

Once in 2004 he was wanted "dead or alive" by the US forces and dismissed as "a firebrand". They soon found that his movement had deep roots. He controls 32 out of 275 seats in the Iraqi parliament. He is the most important ally of the Prime Minister, Nour al-Maliki.

In 2004, the US and its former exile allies paid a heavy price for trying to exclude him from power. In 2005 and 2006, they recognised his strength. He became part of the political process in Iraq while opposing the US-led occupation.

Now, astonishingly the US may be about to confront Sadr and his powerful social and political movement. This could lead almost immediately to a crisis for the US and President Bush’s new strategy for Iraq.

If the US Army, along with Kurdish brigades of the Iraqi army, do assault Sadr City, they are unlikely to win a clean victory. The rest of Shia Iraq is likely to explode. The US is already at war with the 5mn-strong Sunni community and is now fast alienating the Shia.

For the first time this year, polls showed that a majority of Shia approve of armed attacks on US-led forces.

An offensive against Sadr’s Mehdi Army will be portrayed as an attempt to eliminate militias. But it is, in reality, an attack on one particular militia, because it is anti-American.

The Kurdish brigades in the Iraqi army take their orders from the Kurdish leaders and not from Maliki. The US also has good relations with the other Shia militia, the Badr Organisation, which is the military wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

There is no doubt that the Mehdi Army includes death squads targeting Sunni - but this is also true of Badr.

Sadr first confronted the US when he twice fought the US Army in 2004. Though militarily unsuccessful the fighting established his credibility in his community. He attracted supporters because of the prestige of his family, and his blend of Iraqi nationalism and Shia religion.

He is also seen as the voice of the impoverished Shia while Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the Hawza, the Shia religious establishment, are more representative of the better-off.

His emergence as one of the most important political figures in Iraq was one of the great surprises after 2003. He is neither eloquent nor particularly charismatic, but he has made very few political mistakes.

His swift rise is explained first by his family. He was born in 1974, the third son of Mohamed Sadiq al-Sadr. He is a distant cousin of Ayatollah Mohamed Baqr al-Sadr, the Shia revolutionary thinker, who was murdered by Saddam along with his sister in 1980.

He had sought to develop a religious response to Marxism and Baathism by advocating a politically and socially activist Islam in contrast to the traditionally quietist Shia religious leaders.

Muqtada’s father, Mohamed Sadiq al-Sadr, became influential in the 1990s. At first he was given leeway because he was an Iraqi nationalist and opposed to Iranian claims to lead the Shia of Iraq.

His sermons began with the words: "No, no to America; no, no to Israel; no, no to the Devil." But it soon became clear he was also opposed to Saddam. He was assassinated by Saddam’s gunmen with two of his sons in 1999.

Muqtada al-Sadr became so powerful so fast because he was in the same tradition as his relatives. His militiamen are generally not paid and supply their own weapons. They are beginning to have a core of trained, paid professionals but they were never as militarily effective as the insurgents, many of whom were experienced soldiers.

A US attack on Sadr will open another front in the war in Iraq. It would split the Shia coalition into pro- and anti-American factions. It would disrupt the Shia-Kurdish alliance. It probably would not conciliate the Sunni insurgents.

Sadr’s movement thrives on martyrs. The only certain result of an all-out US assault on the Mehdi Army would be to deepen and widen the war in Iraq. – The Independent