The Seattle Times March 14, 2006
Renegade cleric strengthens his hand
By Borzou Daragahi
Los Angeles Times
SADR CITY, Iraq — Muqtada al-Sadr's expanding web of power starts right here, on the teeming streets of a neighborhood in eastern Baghdad named after his assassinated father and uncle.
It begins with charities and public services, such as subsidized cooking fuel, street cleaning and soccer games for the aimless boys of the Shiite Muslim ghetto.
It extends to neighborhood watch groups as well as his al-Mahdi Army militiamen, who control and secure Sadr City as well as southern cities such as Basra, sometimes menacing rival Shiite groups, U.S.-led forces and, more recently, Sunni Arab neighborhoods.
It has spread to Iraq's parliament, where the young anti-American cleric's followers control a key 35-seat bloc that has boosted interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's political fortunes, and to provincial councils and local police forces in the Shiite south, where militiamen serve as a kind of morality police.
It stretches through key ministries such as transportation and health, which have become vast patronage troves for al-Sadr's followers. And it has grown beyond Iraq's borders: al-Sadr has spent the last few months visiting other countries in the region as he rides a wave of tremendous popular support unique for any of the political movements that have emerged in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was ousted.
Three years ago, the U.S. invaded Iraq at least in part to unleash its democratic potential. Instead, by deftly employing gun and ballot alike, the scowling al-Sadr has used the chaos of the postwar period to spread his movement's power day by day — and, startlingly, to transform himself from obscure young rabble-rouser to hunted rogue to statesman.
Al-Sadr's status has alarmed U.S. officials hoping to wind down the American presence and leave behind a stable government. U.S. and Iraqi officials worry that his movement, with its arsenal of weapons and radical ideology, poses a threat to any central authority and inspires other political movements to take up arms.
"Muqtada! Muqtada!" chant thousands of his followers, largely unemployed and disenfranchised young men, during Friday prayers in Sadr City, in frequent rowdy street rallies, during religious ceremonies where older crowds blush at the sight of al-Sadr's followers jumping up and down and twirling their hips. "Yes, yes, Muqtada!"
Electricity courses through the crowds of his followers in Sadr City, the milieu of energetic Iraqi youth. They play soccer in dusty fields of a district that has become a national gold mine of talented professional athletes. They volunteer for street-cleanup operations and donate blood after Friday prayers. They carry rocket-propelled grenade launchers and AK-47s as they patrol Sadr City as part of the militia known as the al-Mahdi Army.
"We do all the services for the people, all the humanitarian work," said Kareem al Jorani, a member of the militia. "Whatever people need, we provide. We protect them at night. We provide security for the people."
Others in Baghdad call Sadr City residents "shorooghi," or easties, a derogatory term referring to the capital's poor eastern edge as well as the predominantly Shiite southeast of the country that was brutally suppressed by Saddam.
The young al-Sadr, somewhere between his mid-20s and mid-30s, has turned "shorooghi" into an emblem of pride, a rallying cry of a defiant movement forged in mosques as well as on the battlefield.
Al-Sadr inherited control of the Martyr Sadr foundation, the network of mosques and charities throughout the country's Shiite areas funded by donations from the millions of followers of the al-Sadr clerical line, after the fall of the former regime.
But his benevolent efforts aside, violence has been a part of al-Sadr's legacy and a tool for his advancement since he announced the creation of the al-Mahdi Army in the summer of 2003, quickly turning it into an impromptu force of thousands of young men.
Fighting broke out between al-Mahdi militiamen and U.S. forces in the spring and summer of 2004. The militiamen surprised Americans with their tenacity. By the time the battles ended in the autumn of 2004, the militiamen had fought the Americans to near standstills.
Al-Sadr's movements suffered heavy losses, and incurred heavy damage to Valley of Peace cemetery in Najaf, his hometown and the site of the shrine of the Imam Ali as well as some of the faith's most important seminaries.
The people of Najaf and the nearby shrine city of Karbala, mostly loyal to more moderate clerics such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, grew to despise al-Sadr.
But his battle scars and vehement denunciations of U.S. and British forces bolstered his nationalist credentials to followers and demonstrated to a ruling class of mostly exile politicians his capacity to use his militiamen to bring the political process to a halt. Senior clergy in both Iraq and Iran pressed him to join a coalition with other Shiite parties in two parliamentary elections last year.
The young al-Sadr played it both ways, criticizing the elections while allowing his followers to run as both independents and on the Shiite slate. He now controls more seats in the 275-seat legislature than any other single figure.
When it came time to dole out ministries, al-Sadr asked for and received the ministries of transportation, with control over Iraq's air and sea ports, roadways and motor-vehicle licensing, and health, with at least 150,000 employees, and began handing out jobs to followers.
"The Mahdi Army of Iraq is at the service of the Iraqi people," Sadr said in an interview last month on Al-Jazeera. "The Mahdi Army was at a time a military army, but now it has become a cultural army. In the past the fight was a military one. Now the conflict is a religious one."
Still, al-Mahdi's paramilitary operations continue apace. Young al-Mahdi militiamen, who have abandoned their trademark black garb for street clothes but still tote Kalashnikovs and wear flak jackets, direct traffic and check cars in Sadr City.
News reports Monday said vigilantes in Sadr City either shot or hanged four men blamed in bombings that ripped through teeming market streets on Sunday, killing at least 58 people and wounding more than 200. The hanged men each had a note pinned to the chest spelling out "traitor," in what appeared to be retribution by locals for the previous night's attacks, police said.
Iraqis had feared such attacks in the neighborhood, especially after al-Sadr's fighters stormed out of the slum to take revenge on Sunni Muslims and their mosques after the Feb. 22 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra.
Amid rising impatience at daily attacks, al-Sadr vowed to confront attacks on Shiites "militarily, religiously and ideologically," during a speech in the holy city of Najaf. But al-Sadr avoided blaming Sunni Muslims, adding "I don't want to be dragged into a civil war."
Al-Sadr accused the United States of providing "support" to the culprits in Sunday's attack, but he did not elaborate. He also had a response for U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said last week that U.S. troops would let Iraqi security forces deal with any civil war that might break out.
"My friend, whether there's a civil war or not, we don't want you to intervene," Sadr said.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, in turn, spoke sharply of the popular Shiite leader's demands for a U.S. withdrawal, which he has made repeatedly since 2003.
"Coalition forces are present in Iraq on the basis of an invitation from the government, and you are part of it," Khalilzad told al-Hayat newspaper.
Also, referring to ousted president Saddam Hussein, Khalilzad said he wanted to remind al-Sadr that "Saddam's regime killed his father and that the U.S. saved the Iraqi people from this regime. ... Muqtada al-Sadr should be grateful to us for what the American people did."
Last week, though, al-Sadr said Saddam Hussein should not be tried but should be executed immediately. He criticized what he called American intervention in the trial.
Saddam was believed to have ordered the 1999 assassination of al-Sadr's father, Mohammed Sadiq, a top Shiite religious leader who spent years in jail under the former Iraqi leader.
Al-Sadr was blamed for the 2003 mob killing of a pro-U.S. cleric, Abd al-Majid al-Khoi, himself the son of another extremely powerful former grand ayatollah, Abolqassem al-Khoi.
Al-Sadr's followers enforce not only security but a fairly harsh Islamic fundamentalism. On university campuses, al-Mahdi army adherents order women to cover their heads. They have intimidated liquor-store owners. Last year in Basra, the militiamen stormed through a coed picnic beating unveiled women.
But even Iraqis who loathe al-Sadr's fundamentalism welcome his movement's efforts to guard mosques and religious ceremonies and act as a force of order, if not law. In the rest of the capital and much of the rest of the country, Iraqis cower in their homes, their neighborhoods moribund caldrons of fear and despair. Sadr City and cities of the south buzz with frenetic activity, protected by armed militiamen.
Additional material from The Associated Press and globalsecurity.org
© Copyright 2006, Reuters
