The prophecy is more than seeing into the future. For the prophecy sees without the element of time. For the prophecy sees things as they were, as they are, and as they always shall be.
“The EU, with all its power, called on America and its spoiled son
Israel to undermine the union,” Sadr said in a statement issued Saturday
and published by Arabic news site Elaph on Saturday, adding that
Britain’s vote to leave was “the first step towards undermining and
weakening” the EU.
Sadr also said that the differences in opinion between the UK
government and the British people about various matters, such as
remaining or exiting the EU, show that the government does not know what
the people’s needs are.
Commenting on David Cameron’s resignation following the Brexit vote,
Sadr said this was due to the British PM “failing to implement his
electoral vows.” (Reuters)
He also said that he does not expect Britain to be the last country
to exit the EU, adding that other countries such as France and Germany
may follow suit.
“These countries’ exit will mark the union’s end,” he added.
Commenting on David Cameron’s resignation following the Brexit vote,
Sadr said this was due to the British PM “failing to implement his
electoral vows.”
In Iraq, supporters of cleric Muqtada Sadr shock the leadership
A supporter of Muqtada Sadr holds a portrait of the Shiite cleric during a protest against corruption in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood on May 6, 2016. (Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP/Getty Images)
Unlike previous demonstrations that have ebbed and flowed over the
last year with little political effect, the thousands of protesters who
ransacked parliament and accosted fleeing lawmakers shocked the
country’s perpetually bickering leaders and left many wondering whether
the country’s embattled prime minister will survive in office.
As supporters of the cleric, Muqtada Sadr,
left the manicured lawns of an area that had been largely off-limits to
them for 13 years, Sadr threatened to bring down the government and
force new elections if the legislature fails to approve a Cabinet of
technocrats — one not dictated by ethnic and sectarian quotas.
More than a week later, the reverberations could still be felt.
Yet the moves mattered little to the thousands who once again took to the streets in the impoverished Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City on Friday to protest against a government they see as ineffective and corrupt.
“This is a historical turning point. The break-in created a rift in
the failed political process, and this is what we want to happen so as
to reform it,” said Mohsen Kaabi, an elderly man who carried a blue sign
that read, “We demand the thief of public money be held accountable.”
Another man standing nearby, Mahmoud Salihi, agreed, saying it had “revealed the truth about those in parliament.”
“If they were clean and honest, they would have stayed and talked to
us, asked us what we wanted. But they know they are thieves, so they ran
away,” he said.
At the heart of the populist anger is deep frustration with the
government’s inability to provide the most basic services such as
electricity and garbage collection. (Trash heaps are a common sight
throughout Baghdad’s streets.)
“Iraq is a rich country with oil, but for 13 years they haven’t
solved the issue of power,” said Mohammed Mahameed, a taxi driver who
spoke wistfully of the round-the-clock electricity in neighboring Jordan
where he visited last year.
“In the summer, every four hours we only get one hour of electricity. How is this possible? Where is the oil going?”
Security is also a concern, as the country faces the persistent
threat of Islamic State. In 2014,
Baghdad narrowly avoided being overrun
by the extremist group by enlisting the help of militias known as the
Popular Mobilization Units.
“The mere fact that you leave your home, or drop off your kids at
school, and worry whether you or they will return home is the biggest
proof of the corruption of the government,” said Maytham Hillo, a
dermatologist and leftist political author who was speaking at a weekly
discussion group called “For those who dare to be reasonable.”
Plunging oil prices and a bloated public sector have led to a deficit
that the government, which ranks a dismal 161 out of 168 in
Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, is
ill-equipped to handle.
Abadi has tried to enact the reforms demanded by Sadr and his followers, but has been repeatedly thwarted by the country’s entrenched ethnic and sectarian-based political factions. The storming of the Green Zone came
after Abadi’s third attempt to get approval for a Cabinet not formed
according to quotas established after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The attempt was postponed for lack of a quorum.
At Friday sermons in Sadr City, Sadrist clerics
insisted this was an issue for all Iraqis, regardless of sect or
ethnicity, while the crowd chanted, “No, no to America, no, no to
Britain, no, no to Israel, yes, yes to reform.”
They also chanted slogans against Iranian intervention in the country, a sign of Sadr’s
complicated relationship with the Islamic Republic’s leaders, even
while the cleric left for Tehran last week for what his office described
as a two-month spiritual retreat.
Those allied with the cleric insist that Sadr’s calls for reform are not part of a power play.
“Muqtada al Sadr does not
know how to be sycophantic, he only serves the Iraqi people,” said
parliamentarian Hakim Zamili, adding that such accusations were the
result of fear on the part of Sadr’s enemies.
“There is no going back, and we will now have the project of reform,
to change to a professional independent government that does not belong
to the parties.”
“Sadr is part of the
government, of the corruption and the quota system, part of the
sectarian fighting. It’s as if he has transformed the anger on the
streets into a political bloc against other political parties,” said
Hillo, pointing to both Sadr’s history of switching sides and his
religious following.
“We cannot just forgive Sadr for what he did…. He is not trustworthy.”
CBS News BAGHDAD — There were thousands of heavily armed
police out today, new blast walls had sprung up overnight and there were
rows of armored personnel carriers — even tanks — in the streets.
Protesters storming the Green Zone last weekend.
Last weekend thousands of protesters stormed the Green Zone and over ran parliament, accusing the government of corruption.
It looked like an uprising.
Today the massive security cordon meant his supporters were confined to Sadr City, the sprawling Shia neighborhood on the edge of Baghdad.
It hasn’t changed much in the years since the war has ended.
“They don’t care about us,” said Said, who was in Al Batad and said
he’d taken part in the protest. “Look at the poor the hungry, there’s no
electricity, no drinkable water, and no jobs. How shameful is that?”
Hakim al Zamani, Moqtada al Sadr’s deputy, said the country’s problems had to be addressed.
“For 13 years all we’ve gotten are bombings, corruption, very little security, a weak economy and ISIS,” he said. “We have run out of time, we cannot wait any longer.”
The Pentagon said that 25 more Marines have been sent to the U.S. Embassy in the Green Zone as a precaution.
But it has also caused a backlash against the rabble-rousing cleric —
some politicians accuse him of holding the country to ransom and using
his call for reform for the purpose of increasing his personal
influence.
It has deepened divides in Iraq’s Shiite community, and new blast
walls were erected on bridges around the Green Zone on Friday by a
premier desperate to prove his mettle after the breach that undermined
his credibility.
Meanwhile, the cleric has riled Iranian-backed Shiite militias in the
country, creating a new level of unpredictability to a country already
so fragile.
“The big question is the potential for things to get ugly, and we’ve
already seen glimpses of that,” said Hayder al-Khoei, an Iraq analyst at
the London-based Chatham House think-tank.
Although Iraq is deeply divided along Sunni-Shiite lines, the tension within the Shiite community is driving the current crisis.
“Out, out Iran,” Sadr’s supporters
had chanted as they gathered in the Green Zone, after ransacking
parliament. They had also turned on Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the
Iranian commander who has led efforts against the Islamic State, both in
Iraq and Syria.
As Sadr’s followers stormed the Green Zone, his militiamen took
position around its perimeter. In response, the Khorasani Brigades, an
Iranian proxy militia, and others closer to Tehran, deployed heavily on
the streets of Baghdad. Other militias close to Iran pulled fighters
back from the country’s conflict zones.
“It’s not outside the realms of possibility for them to turn their guns on each other,” Khoei said.
In 2008, then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched the “Charge of
the Knights” against his Mahdi Army in the city of Basra, in an attempt
to wrest control of it from the militia. Then, it was Iran that
eventually brokered a cease-fire agreement, and some hope that Iraq’s
neighbor can step in to rein in Sadr once more.
“Iran has the same point of view as America, that Iraq should be
stable. Stability is very important now,” said Salah Abdul Razzaq, a
Shiite politician and former governor of Baghdad. Iran should play a
mediation role, he said.
A day after his supporters packed up and left their short-lived sit-in, Sadr got on a plane and left for Iran.
His office said it was a personal trip to visit an Iranian shrine,
despite coming at a time when thousands of Shiites stream to a shrine in
Baghdad to pay their respects on the anniversary of the death of an
8th-century imam, a pilgrimage he missed.
The Iraqi rumor mill swirled into action, with some politicians speculating he was summoned by a furious Tehran.
“I think they are angry, maybe they blame him for what happened,” Abdul Razzaq said.
Five days later, he has still not returned, and before his departure,
he had announced a two-month spiritual retreat. His supporters have
remained stoic.
“Everyone should be comforted that even if Sadr stayed in Iran for
half a century, he would not be subjected to any pressure or do anything
against Iraq’s interests,” Dia al-Asadi, a politician with Sadr’s
political bloc, said in a statement last week.
But he distanced Sadr from the anti-Iranian chants, saying the cleric was against them.
There have been other small signs of conciliation from Sadr’s camp,
most notably on Friday, when a directive from the cleric’s office
ordered protests to be held locally around mosques after prayers, rather
than in a mass gathering in Baghdad.
The apparent downscale gives some breathing space for Abadi, who is
desperately trying to steer Iraq out of its crisis. At the center of
Sadr’s demands is a new technocratic government, a policy of Abadi
himself. But despite embarking on a radical reform program last summer
to cut government waste and corruption, Abadi’s success has been
limited. Change involves upsetting a status quo that Iraq’s political
elite currently benefits from, and few expect them to let go easily.
Abadi was already seen as a weak leader, and Sadr’s actions have
undermined him further, with members of parliament incensed by the
breach of their fortified inner sanctum.
As he attempts to regain control, and credibility, he has pledged to
prevent another breach and fired the head of Green Zone security, who
kissed Sadr’s hand as the cleric entered the area in March.
The Shiite cleric’s supporters stormed the Green Zone and
are calling for the demise of the corrupt status quo. But can they
accomplish their goals without plunging Iraq into chaos?
Muqtada al-Sadr has long served
as the spark in a volatile Iraq. When the Shiite cleric ordered his
followers to fight U.S. forces in 2004, it was the gravest challenge to
the United States in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was toppled. More
than a decade later, the mercurial leader has taken on Iraq’s entire
political establishment in a crisis that some fear could tip the country
over the edge.
The miles of concrete blast walls that protect Baghdad’s Green Zone
are the most enduring symbol of the U.S. occupation in Iraq. Last week, a wave of protesters, most of them loyal to Sadr, pulled down the walls and stormed the Parliament building. Some protesters beat up members of Parliament, broke furniture, and sent legislators fleeing for their lives.
Iraq’s largely Shiite security forces, with no orders to use force, didn’t stop the storming of the gates.
The
political crisis is shaking the foundations of a system where
government ministries have been carved up among Shiite, Sunni, and
Kurdish political blocs, and corruption has run rampant. The rivalries
it has exposed among rival armed Shiite groups have raised alarm even in
neighboring Iran. Sadr was little known to the
outside world before 2003. However, he was revered among the followers
of his father, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was
assassinated by Saddam in the 1990s. He emerged from the war with a
militia of poor young men armed with rifles, who began to attack
American tanks in the streets of Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, and Basra. His
Mahdi Army militia fought Iraqi forces in 2008 and, when the United
States jumped in to back the army in Basra, he agreed to a cease-fire
and later reinvented himself as a major political player.
If Sadr styled his persona in the early postwar years as the savior of Iraq’s sovereignty, in recent years he
has burnished his credentials as an Iraqi nationalist prepared to reach
out to Sunnis and other Iraqi minorities, as well as other countries.
A few months ago, Sadr appeared in danger of being eclipsed as a
political force by the Shiite paramilitary leaders who are leading key
battles against the Islamic State and could potentially erode his
support among the Shiite population. But, over the past year, he has
catapulted back onto the national stage by organizing mass protests to
press for government reform.
Sadr has demonstrated that his forces can still defy the Iraqi
government. But he may have also undermined his claims of being in
command. While he had long threatened to have his followers storm the
Green Zone, as they did last weekend, the subsequent beating of
lawmakers, including the Kurdish deputy speaker and a senior Shiite
lawmaker, was not the peaceful protest he said he was calling for.“This
is not the storming he intended,” said Dhia al-Assadi, head of the
Al-Ahrar political bloc, the Sadr movement’s political wing.
Sadr officials blame the violence on members of groups such as the
Badr Organization and Asaib Ahl al-Haq (League of the Righteous), an
Iran-backed militia that broke with Sadr after he agreed to a cease-fire
with U.S. forces in 2004. Sadr is said to fear that his former militia
allies are planning to assassinate him. Following the chaos in
Parliament on Saturday, fighters from the Badr Corps, Asaib Ahl al-Haq,
and forces loyal to Sadr emerged almost instantly to reinforce Iraqi
security forces at checkpoints in Baghdad, including the Green Zone.
Militia fighters have also spread through Baghdad neighborhoods, and
some have pulled their fighters from the front lines to the capital.
“Every group has brought out its armed people,” said a former senior
Iraqi official who, like others, preferred to remain anonymous when
speaking about the militias. “The risk of a Shiite-on-Shiite
confrontation is there.”
Senior Iraqi officials say Iraqi security forces were given no orders
to stop the protesters. When Sadr walked into the Green Zone for the
first time in April, an Iraqi Army general in charge of security there
kissed his hand in obedience. Some witnesses say vehicles
bearing the flag of Sadr’s paramilitary brigades were parked outside
Parliament, indicating that storming the building might have been more
organized than the spontaneous outpouring of anger the Sadrists have
portrayed.
Whatever machinations took place behind the scenes, there is
significant popular support for changing Iraq’s stagnant and corrupt
political status quo. The sight of members of Parliament throwing
punches and water bottles at one another in April on national television
was just the most visible part of a broken system.
For most Iraqis, the Green Zone has become a symbol of corruption and
decadence. After the U.S. invasion, the area was expanded well beyond
Saddam’s original palace compound. Most young Iraqis have never seen its
wide, empty streets, which flank former public parks that were favorite
gathering spots before 2003. They could only dream of seeing the
decorative canals and manicured lawns surrounding politicians’ publicly
subsidized homes – or even the inside of their own Parliament.
“This is the greatest day of my life,” one protester shouted as the gates fell.
Tehran, however, was among the many capitals watching with alarm.
Deeply worried at the prospect of intra-Shiite fighting, Iran fears the
effect of rifts within the Shiite ranks on the fight against the Islamic
State. Iranian officials were also said to be particularly offended by chants of “Iran out!” by
some protesters as well as deeply alarmed at the prospect of
intra-Shiite fighting.Sadr officials publicly condemned the chants. Sadr
is widely believed to have been summoned to Iran to account for the
debacle, and announced before the Green Zone was stormed that he was
taking a two-month spiritual retreat.
It isn’t the first time he has disappeared from view. He decamped to
Iran after his troops were driven out of Basra in 2008 and, amid
scandals over corruption by Sadr movement politicians, announced in 2014
he was withdrawing from politics.
“If you look at the pattern of the past six or seven years, every
time he steps out of line he gets called to Iran and he goes quiet,”
said a Baghdad analyst who asked to remain anonymous.
Although he studied in Iran for several years, Sadr is not among
Iraq’s senior religious clerics and has not always been treated there
with the respect he believes his religious legacy deserves. He is the son of a revered Shiite cleric assassinated by Saddam — to millions of followers, his word is law.
Sadr rarely appears in person, but his supporters are ready to die
for him. On Tuesday, in Tahrir Square, named to commemorate the bloody
1958 revolution that toppled the monarchy, a few of his followers waited
for instructions.
The protest tents erected in the square weeks ago for sit-ins are
largely gone, but another major protest is planned for Friday.
Underneath the sweeping monument depicting the Iraqi struggle for
freedom, a large sign quoted Sadr as telling his followers: “Your faith
in your leader imposes the responsibility to not ask questions about the
reasons.”
“I’m following the orders of Sayid Muqtada,” said Saleh Mohammed, a
35-year-old civil servant. “I won’t leave even if I’m killed here.”
Mohammed said he was among the protesters who stormed Parliament.
“We wanted to ask them what they are doing for the country,” he said.
“The first lesson was telling them [the MPs] there is no place for them
in government. The next lesson will be more difficult for them.”
Although the core of Sadr’s support is made up of the poor and
jobless, it also includes educated Iraqis who believe in his message of
equality and social justice.
“Educated people are in the street selling Kleenex at intersections,”
said another protester, a university-educated single mother. “Our
children aren’t getting a proper education, and the poor are dying
because they don’t have money to pay for medical treatment.”
The protests began as broad-based demonstrations last year to demand
better government services and an end to the corruption that some Iraqis
see as a bigger threat than the Islamic State. Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani, Iraq’s most revered Shiite religious scholar, lent his
support to the demonstrations, effectively giving Prime Minister Haider
al-Abadi a mandate to implement sweeping changes. But without the
standing in his Dawa Party or among other political factions to push his
proposed reforms through Parliament, they have stalled. Although some
relatively low-level officials have been charged with corruption, no
major political figures have been indicted.
Sadr and former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki are the two key
figures in Iraq’s ongoing political crisis, although neither holds an
official political position. They are also sworn enemies whose forces
previously battled each other in Basra and Baghdad.
Sadr withdrew his government ministers to allow Abadi to move forward
with a new cabinet of technocrats – appointed for their qualifications
and not their loyalty to political blocs. Maliki loyalists, however,
refused to vote on the new cabinet in a normal parliamentary session,
organizing instead a sit-in in April and demanding to convene their own
session with a new speaker to vote on the new cabinet and eventually a
new prime minister. Maliki, who lost his position as vice president when
Abadi eliminated those posts last year, has said he is not seeking to
regain power, although few Iraqis believe him. Parliament managed to
agree on only five new ministers in the week before the protesters
stormed the gates.
Kurdish members of Parliament, deeply shaken by the attacks on some
of their members, left en masse for Kurdistan last week after Parliament
was stormed. If they come back, they are likely to demand more
political power and revenue sharing as conditions.
Amid the political chaos, and the impossibility of holding new elections while the Islamic State controls parts of the country, some politicians are calling for an emergency “national salvation” government to replace the current one.
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
Iraqi militiaman march in support of Moqtada Sadr in the holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, on May 10, 2004.
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.
On April 30, after months of protests over political reforms,
hundreds of Sadr supporters stormed the parliament in Baghdad’s heavily
fortified Green Zone. The protesters withdrew after 24 hours, but Sadr
has threatened another mass protest this week.
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. Prime minister, Haider al-Abadi
The months-long political paralysis is diverting the attention of
Iraqi leaders from the fight against Islamic State. Iraqi military
officials have been working with American counterparts to prepare a
major operation to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.
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
Al-Sadr was able to “demonstrate that you can’t ignore him and he can
pierce the corridors of power, literally,” said Michael Knights of the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an expert on the cleric. “His
objective would be to increase his own clout as a political kingmaker.”
The unrest raised doubts about the political stability of Iraq and
occurred at a fragile moment when the government of Prime Minister
Haider al-Abadi is struggling to mount an effective counteroffensive
against Islamic State forces occupying the nation’s second-largest city,
Mosul.
Al-Abadi had agreed to push for changes aimed at replacing
politically connected ministers with non-partisan technocrats as a way
to do away with endemic corruption in the government. Al-Sadr embraced these changes
and demonstrated his clout in February by calling for a rally in
Baghdad’s Tahrir Square that drew 100,000. Many who attended
were impassioned young people angry about corruption and the chronic
failure of the government to provide such basic public services as
reliable electricity without continual power outages.
“He’s trying to position himself as a good-government advocate,” said
Stephen Biddle, professor of political science and international
affairs at George Washington University. “He’s very opportunistic.”
The assault on the government center was in response to parliament’s failure to enact anti-corruption laws.
Al-Sadr’s movement is the latest incarnation for a personality that
has played
a leading role in Iraq since 2003. For years after the
U.S.-led invasion, his Mahdi Army fought bloody engagements with U.S.
troops.
Al-Sadr portrayed himself as a nationalistic, anti-American leader
who declared solidarity with Arab Sunni insurgents fighting the U.S.
Marines in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, according to Ibrahim Al-Marashi,
assistant history professor at California State University-San Marcos.
As Iraq’s prime minister struggles to reform his government while
fighting the Islamic State militants who fiercely defend Mosul, al-Sadr
has “become in some ways the most potent political player during this
crisis,” Knights said.
The capital and many southern cities have witnessed demonstrations in
recent weeks calling for provision of basic services, the trial of
corrupt politicians, and the shake-up of a system riddled with graft and
incompetence.
Protesters’ demands, which initially aimed at improving power supply
amid a sweltering heat-wave, have focused more on encouraging Abadi to
accelerate reforms, put corrupt officials on trial and loosen the grip
of powerful parties over the state.
“What Abadi has done so far is just casual reform. It’s not the real
reforms that most of the Iraqis are looking for,” said Mazen
al-Ushaiqer, a civil society leader at the Baghdad rally.
Partly in response to protests earlier this month, Abadi began
pushing reforms to a system he says has deprived Iraqis of basic
services and undermined the fight against Islamic State (IS) militants.
He announced several measures to combat corruption and mismanagement
including scrapping layers of senior government posts, cutting security
details and other perks for officials, and encouraging corruption
investigations.
Likewise, huge protesters filled main streets of the Shia provinces
of the south, demanding for real actions to put reforms into effect.
“People aren’t just protesting over services like water and
electricity,” said Sabeeh Zuhair, an engineer from the southern oil hub
city of Basra. “It is true that they are an important thing, but there
are things that are more important than them.”
On Friday, Abadi directed military commanders to ease civilian access
to the Green Zone, the central Baghdad district which is home to many
government buildings and several Western embassies.
Checkpoints and concrete barriers have blocked bridges and highways
leading to the neighborhood for years, symbolizing the isolation of
Iraq’s leadership from its people and wreaking havoc on traffic in the
city of 7 million people.
Abadi also ordered the elimination of no-go zones set up by militias
and political parties in Baghdad and other cities in response to more
than a decade of car bombings.
Security at Friday’s protests was tight and helicopters circled
overhead. At the Baghdad protest at least four people were wounded in
clashes and security forces detained a handful of youths carrying
weapons.
Abadi ordered on Friday the formation of a legal committee to review
the ownership of state properties and return illegally gained assets to
the state. Critics say some officials have abused their authority to
appropriate state-owned properties for personal use.
Top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who wields authority
few Iraqi politicians would openly challenge, has called on Abadi to
“strike with an iron fist” against corruption.
On Friday, he cautioned protesters against letting personal goals
distract from their demands while urging politicians to provide tangible
results of reform measures.
(Reuters)
Protesters
chant slogans in support of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi as
they carry a large national flag during a rally in Tahrir Square in
Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Aug. 28, 2015. Friday’s protesters were joined
for the first time by followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical,
anti-American Shiite cleric. The protesters have staged weekly rallies
since last month to press demands for reforms, better services and an
end to corruption. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
Iraq’s top Shiite cleric says government must show nation it’s seeking genuine change
Aug 28, 2015
In a message delivered by a representative in a Friday sermon, Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani also cautioned protesters who have staged
weekly rallies to press demands for reform that they must guard against
groups seeking to hijack their movement to further other interests.
Al-Sistani’s comments, delivered in Karbala, challenged the
government to show that it is “truthfully and seriously” responding to
demands for change. “Citizens have experienced past promises that were
never realized on the ground,” he cautioned.
“Officials must work differently this time around and win the trust of the citizens,” he said.
The weekly rallies, which began last month, have been pressing for
better basic services like power, water and medical care, as well as an
end to corruption and sectarian politics. The graft is widely believed
to be rampant, involving hundreds of millions of dollars in the 12 years
since Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled.
Al-Abadi has responded to the rallies with a package of reforms that
reduced the size of his Cabinet, and eliminated the three vice
presidencies and the three deputy prime minister posts. He has also
ordered a revision of the government’s pay scale and the annulment of
financial perks enjoyed by senior officials, lawmakers and consultants.
His actions raised questions about the legality of his reforms and whether they violate the constitution.
“I will not back down,” al-Abadi vowed in televised comments this
week. “There is no going back on reforms. Our political system needs
popular pressure to reform itself,” said the Shiite prime minister who
has said he would seek a popular mandate to amend the constitution,
which he described as “incomplete.”
Separately, an explosion on Friday ripped through the parking lot of a
police station in southeast Baghdad when a police bomb squad tried to
defuse a car bomb while colleagues looked on, killing six and wounding
10, according to security and hospital officials.
The six killed were three bomb squad members and three policemen.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Baghdad has for years seen near daily attacks targeting civilians and
security forces by car bombs, suicide attacks and roadside explosions.
The attacks are mostly blamed on Sunni militants.
Bahraini regime forces stormed the cleric’s house in the mostly-Shia
village of Diraz, west of the capital Manama, and checked the identities
of everyone inside the house.
The senior Shia cleric braved the tense atmosphere created by the
regime and said at the Friday prayers in Diraz that pro-democracy
protests would continue unabated in the country.
Sheikh Qassim has repeatedly and openly criticized the Al Khalifah regime over violent crackdown on anti-regime protests.
The downfall of Saddam and his clique allies from Tikrit and other
Sunni Arab areas sparked a major shift in power relations. Previously
oppressed Shia factions burst onto the political scene and took control
of the state apparatus, displacing the previous Sunni Arab leadership in
a sometimes savagely violent fashion.
Sadr maintains that some of the more violent attacks were carried out
by “splinter elements.” Iranian support for certain elements within the
Mahdi Army, in particular Khazali’s special factions, had undermined
Sadr’s control. As early as September 2006, increasingly empowered local
militiamen were indeed going rogue. Sadr now asserts that those
Sadrists responsible for terrorism, murder, and criminal activity during
the 2006–2008 civil war were mostly the Khazali-led factions that
eventually broke off and became the Iranian-backed militia Asaib Ahl
al-Haq (League of the Righteous).
The New Sadr: Seeking Broader Alliances
Regardless of how to assign blame for the Mahdi Army’s abuses in the
2006–2008 period, Sadr’s policies in this period were certainly
influenced by sectarian calculations and they contributed greatly to
Sunni resentment and Iraq’s descent into civil war. So why, then, is
Sadr a positive influence on Iraq’s polity at present?
Sadr’s hostility for Maliki has created opportunities for cross-sectarian collaboration. For
example, he voiced support for the Sunni protesters who began airing
grievances against Maliki in 2011. In 2012, Sadr forged a parliamentary
alliance with Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and the Sunni-favored
centrist politician Ayad Allawi to motion for a no-confidence vote
against Maliki. Had Maliki been forced to resign, that could possibly
have prevented Iraq’s current chaos. However, Iran used its relationship
with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani, who was
then president of Iraq, to keep the premier in place for two more years.
The Sadrists have also committed themselves to re-empowering Iraq’s local political institutions and parliament, all sidelined by Maliki’s centralized rule. This can be seen in their repeated demands
for the relocation of bodies such as the Integrity Commission (which
monitors cases of corruption and extra-legal activity) and the Justice
and Accountability Commission (which organizes the de-Baathification
process) from the Prime Minister’s Office to the House of
Representatives. For the Sadrists, those directly elected by the people
should handle such important portfolios, rather than the executive, as
has been the case under Maliki.
While the old name referenced Shia
millennialism, he now chose to call the armed wing of the Sadrist
movement Saraya al-Salam, the Peace Companies. The change
from an allusion to Shia theology to a nonsectarian sobriquet is
representative of the shift that the Sadrist movement is undergoing.
This represents another change from previous policies. Sadr formerly
had very poor relations with the ISF, partly due to his perception that
it served as a tool of Maliki and other pro-Iranian Shia factions. In
2006–2008, for example, the Mahdi Army repeatedly fought ISF troops
loyal to the Badr Corps, an Iranian-backed militia against which Sadr
has long held a grudge.
But now, the Peace Companies participate in joint operations with the
ISF against the Islamic State, for example in Tikrit. Once his rival
Maliki was deposed, Sadr quickly grew to appreciate the importance of a
strong and centralized ISF force, both to roll back the Islamic State
and to counter the proliferation of Iranian-oriented Shia militias that
question Baghdad’s sovereignty.
Is the Sadr model then a potential solution to the sectarian strife
that mars Iraq, Syria, and the rest of the neighborhood? Members of his
movement certainly have been part of the problem, for example by
pursuing de-Baathification in a vengeful and sectarian fashion. Sadr
himself has a troubled past and occasionally lapses into extremist
rhetoric even today.
However, by arguing against Iraqis being drawn into cross-border sectarian struggles, Sadr has positioned himself as an important voice of reason within the Shia community that dominates Iraq.
The Iraqi-first mindset now promoted by the Sadrists is crucial for
Iraq’s continued survival, as secessionist sentiments grow not only
among Sunni Arabs and Kurds, but also among the Shia. While both Iraqis
and the international community used to laugh at the idea of Sadrists in
government, today it may be a precondition for Iraq’s return to
stability.
Renad Mansour is a non-resident scholar in the Carnegie Middle East Center. He tweets @renadmansour.
Michael David Clark (mdc48@cam.ac.uk) is a doctoral candidate at the
University of Cambridge. His research focuses on foreign policy
formulation in Hezbollah and the Sadrist Movement.
Iraq’s Top Cleric Calls For Prime Minister Maliki To Be Replaced – And Iran’s Military Mastermind Has A List Of Names
Michael Kelley and Armin Rosen
Jun 28, 2014, 12.51 AM
Iraq’s top Shiite cleric told political leaders to pick a new prime minister in the next four days, Krishnadev Calamur of NPR reports.
“Tuesday’s session will be the first since an election in April, and
comes as parties jostle to form the largest coalition and therefore the
right to appoint the prime minister,” Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani spokesman said, according to NPR correspondent Alice Fordham.
Several senior Iraqi Shiite politicians told the Associated Press
that Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) General Qassem Soleimani,
who calling the shots in Baghdad, has “a list of potential prime
minister candidates for Iran’s leadership to consider … [and] is
expected to return within days to inform Iraqi politicians of Tehran’s
favorite.”
Sistani is Iraq’s highest-ranking cleric, and is the “prime marja,”
or spiritual reference-point, for the world’s 150-200 million Shi’ites.
He’s had a moderating influence over the past decade of turmoil in Iraq.
He negotiated a truce with radical Shi’ite cleric and longtime rival Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army when the militant group took over Najaf’s shrines – some of the holiest sites in Shi’ism – in 2004.
Sistani has long been a proponent of Iraq’s democratic process,
organizing a Shi’ite electoral bloc in 2005, and pointedly refuse to
endorse any candidates during elections in 2010, thus allowing the
political process to unfold free of his overwhelming influence. Sistani
also issued a fatwa against sectarian violence in late 2013. Notably,
Sistani also urged Iraqis to join the security services to fight ISIS on
June 16th.
Iraq’s leading religious figure and a long-time opponent of the
country’s most hardcore Shi’ite sectarians now believes that Iraq’s
authoritarian and Iranian-supported Shi’ite strongman can no longer
remain in power. It’s possible that Sistani wants to prevent Iraq from
spiraling into all-out sectarian war, and sees Maliki’s removal as the
only remaining off-ramp. Notably, Sistani urged Iraqis to join the
security services to fight ISIS on June 16th.
And it’s possible that the Iranians are leveraging Sistani to affect a
change in policy that they’re contemplating anyway: the AP notes that
Souleimani met with Sistani’s son for two hours this week. With Sistani
appearing to broker Maliki’s exit, Iran’s hands can appear relatively
clean – and Tehran will get a hand-picked successor to Maliki that seems
to diffuse the country’s political crisis without lessening Iranian
influence.
Iranian proxy militias have bolstered southern Iraq since at least
January, when a call for “protectors of holy sites in Syria and Iraq”
led to Shia many Iraqi Shia fighters returning from Syria to protect
cities that are now threatened by an ISIS-led Sunni coalition.
Al-Maliki suppresses voice of religious clerics calling for change and reform in Iraq
Al-Maliki Tries to Suppress Al-Sadr
The elections battle on the presidency of the Iraqi ministerial council has become fierce as politicians and religious figures
call for political change and reform, as well as urging voters not cast
votes for previous figures who failed to achieve safety and security.
Al-Ahrar Movement is hopeful that its candidate will win the position
because he enjoys considerable popularity amongst the people of Maysan.
Factions always avoid announcing the names of their nominees before the
end of elections.
In an unprecedented move, Al-Maliki threatened to expel the Supreme
Shia Cleric in Najaf Ali Sistani if he does not remain silent on the eve
of the elections.
A Shia source close to
Al-Sistani said that Al-Maliki sent a letter to Al-Sistani asking him to
stay away from the candidates. The same source also said that
Al-Sistani’s oldest son reported threats against his father by
Al-Maliki.
Al-Sistani’s son said that Al-Maliki asked his father to be moderate
in his statements which call for changing faces that failed to improve
the disastrous economic situation.
Al-Sistani has called for a wide participation in the elections for
the sake of change and reform. In his Friday speech he considered the
elections a chance to change the situation in the country.
One of the four Shia clerics in Najaf Bashir Al-Najafi called for
voters not to vote for Al-Maliki. Al-Najafi blamed Al-Maliki’s
government for the disastrous situation in Iraq. He called for choosing
new not “dirty” faces.
Most of the Shia politicians tend to get closer to the Shia clerics
in order to invest their popularity amongst voters. Al-Sistani and other
religious clerics did not support any political party.
Analysts expect that the clerics’ calls to choose new faces and not
corrupt officials worry Al-Maliki and embarrass him in front of the Shia
population.
The entrances to the city of Baghdad will be closed this evening as
part of preparations for the parliamentarian elections. Security
spokesmen said the closures are part of a security plan to protect
voters and voting centres.
Gregg Zoroya
