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Backgrounder: Maliki and Sadr: An Alliance of Convenience

Council on Foreign Relations

Prepared by: Lionel Beehner, Staff Writer
October 24, 2006

Introduction

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has come under fire from U.S. officials for his refusal, or at least inability, to disband the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr’s militia, known as the Mahdi Army, is accused of carrying out a number of attacks against Sunni insurgents, coalition forces, and rival militias like the Badr Brigade. Maliki relies on Sadr, who controls a large bloc of parliamentary seats, for political support and can ill afford to alienate his religious and conservative base. Experts say the alliance between the two poses a serious threat to American efforts to hand over security duties to the four-month-old government and begin scaling back U.S. forces.

What is Maliki’s relationship to Muqtada al-Sadr?

Maliki, a top member of the conservative Dawa Party, enjoys the political support of Sadr, a popular anti-U.S. Shiite cleric. “Behind Dawa is really Sadr,” says CFR Adjunct Senior Fellow Vali R. Nasr. “His party was a tiebreaker party. Sadr himself did not have another prime minister [as a candidate earlier this year] that either the United States or SCIRI (Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq) would have accepted.” SCIRI is a top Shiite party whose leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, has frequently clashed with Sadr. “The problem is that ultimately [Maliki] is completely dependent on Muqtada al-Sadr and Hakim and a variety of other groups out there who, quite frankly, have no interest in doing the right thing,” says Kenneth M. Pollack, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, in an interview with CFR.org. As he grows increasingly isolated from his American benefactors, says Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service, Maliki is reaching out more to clerics like Sadr and the Supreme Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to seek support in curbing the violence.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.