The Shia Avenger

By Cernig

In the course of reveiwing Patrick Cockburn's new book on Muqtada al-Sadr, Middle East expert Valki Nasr offers some analysis of his own.

Muqtada's populism -- voicing the frustrations of the Shia poor and promising them a path to power -- is only part of the reason for his steady rise. Anti-Americanism also plays a role. When the U.S. occupation began, the Shia grand ayatollahs in Najaf -- the venerated "cardinals" of the faith -- looked down on the young, relatively uneducated Muqtada, derisively calling him "the kid." They encouraged their flock to vote in U.S.-backed elections and were content to let U.S. troops fight the mostly Sunni insurgency.

But Muqtada never took the grand ayatollahs' line. He rejected the occupation, and after a massive bomb destroyed the Shia shrine at Samarra in February 2006, his Mahdi Army went looking for revenge on Sunnis. Many Americans interpret Muqtada's avoidance of open sectarian talk and his rejection of dividing up Iraq as signs that he is willing to accommodate Sunnis. But this is a fallacy; he wants a united Iraq in which Sunnis submit to the will of the Shia majority.

Still, the Sadrist phenomenon is not a case of unbending ideology riding straight to power. Muqtada has survived so far, Cockburn argues convincingly, because he knows when to retreat and how to shift alliances. After losing to U.S. troops in Najaf in 2004, he sought protection from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, whom he had earlier tried to dislodge from the city. Recently, he ordered his followers to stand down when fighting in Basra and Sadr City threatened a direct confrontation with U.S. forces, and he again looked to Sistani to deflect pressure to disband his militia. Today, Muqtada hunkers down in Iran and relies on military and financial support from Tehran, something he once ridiculed his rivals for doing to escape Saddam.

Of course, more chapters in Muqtada's life story remain to be written. He confronts challenges from factions within his own movement, including renegade militiamen, messianic pretenders and some of his father's students. He also faces the prospect that the new Iraqi government, though Shia-dominated, will try to assert its unrivaled hold on the country by bringing military pressure against him. And he cannot ignore the continuing criticism of Shia clerics such as Sistani, who has shown displeasure with Mahdi Army tactics, or the possibility that the Iranians may push him aside in favor of other Shia actors (or render him a mere figurehead) as they seek to honeycomb southern Iraq with their own "special groups" operating under the Mahdi Army's name.

Cockburn is good at showing complexity: The Sadr movement is not poised to become a state within a state like the Lebanese Hezbollah anytime soon, nor will it simply melt away. In all likelihood, it will change as the endgame of the American occupation nears and the competition for power quickens. This means we, too, will have a hand in what becomes of Muqtada and his movement. �

Nasr is complimentary about Cockburn's book too:

As veteran British journalist Patrick Cockburn's authoritative biography should make clear, it is unwise to assume a future for Iraq that does not include Muqtada al-Sadr and his movement. Americans need to learn more about him, and Cockburn's empathetic, insightful study is a good place to start. Having covered Iraq for more than three decades for London's Independent and the Financial Times, Cockburn is well placed to introduce readers to this forbidding, enigmatic man and his blood-soaked past.