Moqtada al-Sadr, the man who would be king in Iraq
Wednesday, May 04, 2016
Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is exploiting the oil crisis and the
threat of Islamic State to reimpose himself, this time as a reformer,
despite once leading the Mahdi Army, says Mohamad Bazzi
For years after the 2003 American invasion, Shi’ite cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr had an outsized influence on Iraq’s politics: He mobilised the
Shi’ites in a way few other Iraqi leaders could, his followers created
one of the most powerful militias during the civil war, and he played
kingmaker in the selection of prime ministers.
But after US troops withdrew from Iraq in late 2011, Sadr went into a self-imposed seclusion, even as his supporters ran for parliament and controlled key ministries. Sadr was waiting for his opportunity to play the saviour of Iraq’s Shi’ites.
Today, Sadr is making a comeback, as a nationalist who can both fight Islamic State and stand up to Iran’s growing influence over Iraq, especially through its support of Shi’ite militias.
Iraqi militiaman march in support of Moqtada Sadr in the holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, on May 10, 2004.
But after US troops withdrew from Iraq in late 2011, Sadr went into a self-imposed seclusion, even as his supporters ran for parliament and controlled key ministries. Sadr was waiting for his opportunity to play the saviour of Iraq’s Shi’ites.
Today, Sadr is making a comeback, as a nationalist who can both fight Islamic State and stand up to Iran’s growing influence over Iraq, especially through its support of Shi’ite militias.
As Iraq’s Shi’ite-dominated government tries to retake territory from Islamic State militants and cope with the loss of revenue caused by the global collapse in oil prices, the country faces a new danger: An intra-Shi’ite conflict, among factions competing for power.
While most attention has focused on the struggle between the weak prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, and his Shi’ite competitors — including his predecessor, Nuri al-Maliki — the once-renegade Sadr has again taken centre-stage.
While Sadr is casting himself as a populist and reformer, he has a bloody history. His paramilitary force, the Mahdi Army, led a Shi’ite rebellion against American troops in Iraq, starting in 2004, and it carried out kidnappings and assassinations, and an ethnic-cleansing campaign against Sunnis during the subsequent civil war.
In February, Sadr instigated a mass protest in Baghdad aimed against political corruption and financial mismanagement. In scenes reminiscent of uprisings in other Arab capitals, Sadr brought tens of thousands of Iraqis into the streets of Baghdad.
The cleric demanded that Abadi keep his promises to form a new government and to impose political reforms (eliminating the three posts of vice-president, cutting government spending, and removing sectarian quotas in political appointments) that had stalled since last summer. Sadr did not call for Abadi’s ouster, but framed his protests as an effort to help the prime minister consolidate support.
On March 31, Abadi announced a new cabinet, made up of technocrats, most of them unaffiliated with the powerful political parties that divvied up patronage jobs and government contracts.
Sadr declared victory, called off his protests in the centre of the capital, and returned to his home in the southern city of Najaf. But, since then, Shi’ite parties have forced several of the proposed ministers to withdraw their candidacies and have pressured Abadi to replace them with political operatives.
Iraq’s parliament also failed to approve the new cabinet, setting off a new round of protests, led by Sadr, who is threatening to oust the weakened Abadi and to call for early parliamentary elections.
In June, 2014, Islamic State militants, backed by Sunni tribal fighters, captured Mosul and announced that they would march on to Baghdad, and the southern Shi’ite heartland of Karbala and Najaf.
After the takeover of Mosul, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered cleric in Iraq, issued a call to arms, urging all able-bodied Iraqi men to join the security forces. Within weeks, tens of thousands of Shi’ite volunteers had signed up to join the Iraqi military, or to join one of a growing number of Shi’ite militias (two forces that became indistinguishable in the fight against Islamic State). With Sistani’s appeal and the intervention of Iran, which armed the Shi’ite militias, Iraqis began to turn the tide against the jihadists.
But the effort to retake Mosul has stalled, due to the political bickering and because Iraq’s Shi’ite leaders have not shown a willingness to share power with the beleaguered Sunni minority. Since he reemerged this year, Sadr has portrayed himself as an agent of political reform, who can also make a nationalist appeal to Sunnis. But his overtures failed to generate support in the Sunni community.
“Today, I am among you to say, frankly and bravely, that the government has left its people struggling,” Sadr told supporters at a rally in late February, “against death, fear, hunger, unemployment, occupation, a struggling economy, a security crisis, poor services, and a major political crisis.”
The 42-year-old Sadr does not have the religious credentials of Sistani or of other senior clerics, but he is the son of a revered ayatollah and he has broad support among the Shi’ite masses.
Sadr has emerged as the bad boy of Najaf, who challenges the religious hierarchy represented by Sistani. In the days after the fall of Mosul, Sadr called for ‘peace brigades’ that would protect Shi’ite shrines, churches, and holy sites. But Sadr’s ‘peace brigades’ were simply a new label for his feared Mahdi Army, which had supposedly disbanded in 2008. In June, 2014, his militia returned to its stronghold, the capital’s teeming Shi’ite slum in Sadr City.
In its largest show of force in six years, thousands of Shi’ite fighters marched through the streets with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and suicide explosives belts strapped to their chests.
“I will purify Mosul, I am a Sadrist,” some of the fighters chanted.
Sadr represents the triumph of a defiant brand of Shi’ism. Because Sistani and other senior theologians shun direct political involvement, they create a power vacuum among Iraqi Shi’ites — one that Sadr is eager to fill. He wants to be both a respected cleric and a political broker. In the Shi’ite world, it is unusual for a young cleric with Sadr’s limited theological credentials to gain such a wide following. Sadr is several ranks, and years, away from attaining the title of ayatollah.
But he is the only surviving son of Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was assassinated by the Iraqi regime in 1999. The elder Sadr was a leading Shi’ite scholar, and — unlike Sistani — he advocated a strong political role for the clergy. Sistani and the elder Sadr became rivals in the Shi’ite religious hierarchy.
Aside from his pedigree, Sadr has another claim to leadership: He did not leave Iraq to live in comfortable exile during Saddam Hussein’s rule. Amid the euphoria that followed Hussein’s ouster in 2003, clergymen debated their role in politics. Sadr and his supporters argued that they should fill the void left by the Ba’athist system. They denounced the US occupation, and also Washington’s plan to install an interim government made up mainly of exiled Iraqi politicians, such as Ahmad Chalabi and Ayad Allawi.
Sadr started out as a militia leader, with the populist appeal and credibility that comes from being heir to a family of martyrs. He then turned himself into one of Iraq’s most effective politicians. The elder clerics watched from the sidelines, confident that their religious authority would be more enduring than Sadr’s fleeting political power.
Now, the renegade cleric is once again poised to command the Shi’ite street, and become kingmaker in Iraq.
Mohamad Bazzi is a journalism professor at New York University, and former Middle East bureau chief at Newsday. A former fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, he is writing a book on the proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran. He tweets @BazziNYU
