by Renato Caprile
"A secret army is against us, but the Shi'is will know how to resist"
BAGHDAD -- He feels hunted and is lying low. He never sleeps in the same bed for more than one night. A few of his most faithful have already turned against him. He has even transferred his family to a secret location. Moqtada al Sadr feels that the end is near. Too many enemies, too many infiltrators among his people. Nevertheless, he doesn't have it in for al Maliki, whom he considers little more than a puppet, as much as for Iyad Allawi, the former premier, on whom he believes the Americans would never give up on betting. Allawi, in his view, would be the real director of the operation aimed at wiping him and his Mahdi army off the face of Iraq.
How is that al Maliki, in whose government until recently six ministers of your political current actually served, has suddenly become aware that the religious militias, and yours above all, are the true problem to be solved?
"Between me and Abu Assara (the 'father of Assara ,' the name of Maliki's daughter -- ed.) there never was any deep feeling. I always suspected that he was manipulated, and I never trust him. We met only on two occasions. On the last one, he said to me, 'You are the backbone of the country,' and then he confessed to me that he was being 'obliged' to fight against us. Obliged, understand?"
The fact remains that an iron fist is about to be unleashed against your people.
"It is already unleashed in the meantime. Last night, they already arrested more than four hundred of my people. It is not us that they want to destroy, but Islam. We are only an obstacle. For the time being, we will not make a stand."
Does it mean that you will surrender the weapons?
"During the muharram (the sacred month during which the martyrdom of Hussein, which happened more than six centuries ago, is commemorated -- ed.), the Qur'an prohibits us from killing. May they also kill us, then. For a true believer, there is no better moment to die than this: the Paradise is assured. But God is generous: not all of us will die. After the muharram, we'll talk about it again."
Some claim that the army and police are widely infiltrated by your militia and that the Marines alone will never be able to make it disarm.
"The exact opposite is true: it is our militia that teems with spies. On the other hand, it doesn't take much to infiltrate into a people's army. And it is these very infiltrators who, by disgracing themselves with dishonorable deeds, have discredited the Mahdi army. There are at least four armies ready to unleash themselves against us. A "shadow" army about which no one speaks, trained in great secret in the Jordanian desert by the American military. And then there is that private army of Allawi, an infidel who will soon succeed Maliki, which is being trained at the former military airport of Muthanna. Then, there are Kurdish peshmerga, and finally the regular American troops."
If what you say is true, you do not have any hope of resistance.
"We are many also. We represent the majority of the country who do not want, contrary to what Allawi dreams, Iraq to becomes a secular state, a servant of the Western powers."
For a week you have officially been in the crosshairs. The government holds that without their leaders the religious militias are militarily weaker.
"I am aware of that. For this reason, I have transferred my family to a secure location. I have even made my will, and I move continuously, so that few would know exactly where I am. But even if I had to die, the Mahdi would continue to exist. Men can be killed -- faith and ideas cannot."
It is said that you were also in the middle of the crowd present at the execution of Saddam. Is that true?
"That is utter nonsense. If I had been there, they would have killed me, too. As for Saddam, I certainly did not cry for the man who massacred my family and my people by tens of thousands. But I would have executed him in a public square so all the world could see."
If you were not there, do you deny that there were many of your men in that room?
"No, they were not my men. They were people paid to discredit me. In order to make me appear to be the one who was really in charge of that hanging. The proof lies in the fact -- just play back the audio -- that in reciting my prayer they omitted some key passages. A mistake that even a child in Sadr City would never have made. The objective was to make Moqtada seem like the true enemy of the Sunnis. And the results are here. In the past I was received with all the honors in Saudi Arabia. But immediately after that staged performance under the gallows, my spokesman, al Zarqani, who was on pilgrimage to Mecca, was arrested. An all too explicit way to give me to understand that I was no longer on the list of friends."
In any case the war between you and the Sunnis continues.
"It is true that we are all Muslims and all sons of the same country, but they must first distance themselves from Saddamists, radical groups, Bin Laden's men, in addition to confirming their "no" to the Americans. It would be enough for the ulema to accept our conditions hereof. They have not done so yet."
Is it possible that there is nothing but bloodshed in the future of Iraq?
"If the future is a country divided in three, it does not seem to me that there are alternatives. That's what Bush wants in order to control us better -- certainly not what the Iraqis desire. In my opinion, there is only one means to arrive at a solution: the immediate American withdrawal."
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