Meet the New Ruler of Iraq

I watch army of hooded suicide bombers march in to save Iraq: BARBARA JONES on the frontline as radical cleric who was UK’s most feared and hated enemy takes control of Baghdad to repel rampaging jihadists

Hordes of suicide bombers, holding Kalashnikovs, paraded the streets

Some were wearing white shrouds to denote their readiness to die

They were part of the private army of powerful cleric Moqtada al-Sadr

Mahdi Show Of Force

Display of strength: Mahdi fighters, loyal to the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, take part in a military parade on the streets of Baghdad

By Barbara Jones

Published: 18:43 EST, 21 June 2014 | Updated: 05:26 EST, 22 June 2014

Yesterday I witnessed the extraordinary sight of hordes of suicide bombers, dressed in black and brandishing Kalashnikovs, marching through the slums of Baghdad.  

Grouped into makeshift platoons – some wearing white shrouds to denote their readiness to die – they demonstrated their deadly skills in an astonishing display by ‘detonating’ the bombs they carried.

They were part of the private army of powerful cleric Moqtada al-Sadr,  an enemy of Britain and the US who inflicted terrible damage  on Western troops after the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq.

He has now raised a militia of tens of thousands of fighters to combat the threat posed by ISIS extremists – and yesterday I saw their brutal power for myself.

The Mahdi Army – which has vowed to protect Baghdad and its holy shrines to the death – is now  battling alongside government troops to defend an Iraq on the verge of collapse against advancing Sunni militants.

Their march came on yet another day of fighting and bloodshed as:

• Officials admitted that ISIS – the   Islamic State of Iraq and Syria –  has seized a strategically important  border crossing to Syria, near the town of Qaim, killing 30 troops after a day-long battle;
• About 270 Iraqi troops remained trapped inside the Baiji oil refinery as they struggled to defend it;
• Barack Obama denied that America’s failure to send arms and equipment to rebels in Syria had left a power vacuum in Iraq, which has aided the rise of ISIS;
• There was constant skirmishing 40 miles from Baghdad, with militant Sunni rebels apparently preparing for a thrust from the west.

The reappearance of the Mahdi Army comes a few months after al-Sadr announced his withdrawal from politics citing disillusionment with the corruption of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government.

But it has taken less than two weeks for him to mobilise his  private army again in response to the ISIS attacks in the north.

Al-Sadr himself headed up a  military show of strength in Najaf city, his headquarters, while I and thousands watched a fighting force of men, women and young boys in combat gear and balaclavas brandished rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and truckloads of ground-to-air missiles march through the heart of Baghdad for several hours.

Members of the Shiite Mahdi Army vow to protect Baghdad

They closed off the highways as they made their way through Sadr City, a slum area home to more than a million Shia Muslims.

The platoons assembled according to their city districts. Many were from Sadr City, which has become a no-go zone due to roadside bombs and tension between the poor militant Shia population there and displaced Sunnis, many of whom feel excluded from the government.

As the sheikhs on the podium recited the Koran, I saw fighters fall to their knees in prayer.

It was a day when almost everyone had come out to fight, the aggressive platoons, boasting of their  engineering, bomb-making skills.

The suicide-bomb brigade broke ranks as it passed the podium. At a sign from the sheikhs, the men in balaclavas and ammo-vests went into operational mode, staking out  a target, crouching low on the ground and ‘detonating’ their charges with bravado.

The message over loudspeakers all along the route was threefold: ‘Let the Dash (ISIS) militants see our power today; let Prime Minister  al-Maliki see we are stronger than his government and his army; and tell the Iraqi people not to be afraid, we will win this  war for you.’

The clerics boomed out encouragement: ‘To all those willing to die for Iraq, your souls will go to heaven. We will pray for you.’

Not a shot was fired during this showy parade. But later yesterday, four people were killed by four roadside bombs in Baghdad, two of them in Sadr City.

It was twice the daily average for this volatile city.

Al-Sadr’s powerful display in Baghdad came as ISIS militants claimed to control 75 per cent of the crucial Baiji oil refinery in the north-east, flying its signature black flag over the installation.

Weaponry: Thousands of Shiite militiamen marched through the slums as the ISIS surge continued in parts of Iraq

 

It boasted of trapping 270 Iraqi soldiers inside and threatened to starve them into surrender.

European workers there were evacuated before the attack, but Indian, Chinese and Turkish employees are believed to be hostages.

The effect on oil prices has been instantaneous with Brent Crude  rising to a nine-month high of $115.06 a barrel by Friday.

Meanwhile, around 400 troops  were flown to Mosul and Tikrit to fight the militants now running both cities, extorting money from local firms, and raiding shops and banks.

Iraq’s army, stretched to the limit in fierce battles in cities and surrounding towns, and at Tal Afar airport, has been forced to work with former foes such as the vicious Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq – the League of the Righteous, and other free-ranging Shia militias. Baghdad itself, the seat of government and the last  bastion standing against ISIS, which has total control of Fallujah to  the west and is winning the battle for important towns in Diyala  Province to the north-east, was yesterday in lockdown.

Parade: They have signalled their readiness to take on the Sunni militants. However some have questioned the army’s ability to take on ISIS

 

Hundreds of new checkpoints, both police and military, have appeared over the past few days. Traffic comes to a standstill as  documents, vehicles, drivers and passengers are thoroughly and  laboriously checked.

In the siege mentality which prevails, many are determined to sit it out come what may. Despite reports of people fleeing, there are seats on most flights out and no flood of traffic away from the city centre.

At Baghdad’s only Anglican church, St George’s, yesterday Father Faiz Jerges said: ‘I am  staying here and my congregation is staying here. If necessary I will die with my people.

‘We have our communion services and our youth meetings and our Mothers’ Union. We pray for peace all the time of course, now more than ever, but we also take food rations to the soldiers at the checkpoint outside and we encourage our Muslim friends to join us when they can.

‘We have heard it all for many years and still we are finding the strength to go on. We pray for peace all the time of course, now more than ever. Against all odds we have a good relationship with peace-loving Muslims. We hope for a miracle, to see Baghdad free again one day.’

Kurdish special forces repel militants in Kirkuk

RUTHLESS LEADER OF MAHDI ARMY

Sinister: Moqtada al-Sadr, a powerful figure in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein

 

The man leading the Shia show of strength against ISIS is Moqtada al-Sadr, a powerful figure in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

After the toppling of the dictator in 2003, the radical cleric called for a national rebellion against Western troops, sending out hisMahdi Army militiamen to confront the British and American ‘invaders’.

His followers patrolled the streets of Baghdad’s Shia suburbs, taking on many functions of local government and renaming the Saddam City area to Sadr City, which became a no-go area for coalition forces.

Last year, he said he was laying down his arms. But now he is allying his forces with the Iraqi troops defending Baghdad from ISIS’s Sunni extremists.

Last night, a Shia cleric loyal to al-Sadr said their anti-Western views remained and that the 300 US military advisers en route to Iraq would be attacked.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2014 at 7:18 am and is filed under The Prophecy . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, ortrackback from your own site.

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No, No Satan! The Antichrist Does Not Need the Great Babylon (US)

Inside Baghdad’s Shia slum of Sadr City: ‘We can deal with Isis ourselves’

Mahdi Marches in Baghdad

The streets of Baghdad were brought to a standstill by the Mahdi Army – the vast Shia militia, that is effectively a parallel military force in Iraq

 

By Colin Freeman, Sadr City, and agencies

3:10PM BST 21 Jun 2014

The parade stretched for several miles through the streets of Baghdad, bristling with bazookas, hi-tech assault rifles and artillery guns.

As tens of thousands of uniformed men marched past, loudspeakers proclaimed how they would defend Iraq from the Sunni jihadists rampaging through the country’s north.

This pageant of armed might, however, was not an official Iraqi army display to re-assure an anxious public. Instead, it was a show of force by the Mahdi Army, the vast Shia militia that is effectively a parallel military force in Iraq.

^{Mehdi Army fighters loyal to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr march during a parade in Baghdad’s Sadr city (Reuters)}

Formed as a resistance group after Saddam Hussein’s fall, its fighters were once notorious for killing British troops through improvised roadside bombs – some of which were proudly brandished on the parade.

But despite the departure of their British and American enemies several years ago, the Baghdad government has never disarmed them, and today they continue to exist as the private muscle of Iraq’s hardline Shias.

Hardened in battle against Britain and America, the militiamen are widely seen to have more stomach for fighting than Iraq’s regular soldiers, many of whom fled the recent onslaught from the Islamic State of Iraq and al Shams (Isis). Already, the government has roped in the help of Mahdi Army forces north of Baghdad, where they are credited with helping to halt the Isis advance. Yet the more the militia is used, the greater the chances of Iraq plunging back into civil war again.

Many of the men attending Saturday’s march, which was held in Sadr City, a vast Shia slum district in east Baghdad, were veterans of the insurgency against Britain and the US.

^{Armed Shiite militiamen, followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, parade in the northern oil rich province of Kirkuk, Iraq (Hussein Malla/ AP)}

They made it clear they did not back the Iraqi government’s request for American help, which they saw as the prelude to a second occupation.

“If the Americans are thinking about coming back here, all of we Iraqis will become time bombs – we will eat them alive,” said Adel Jabr Albawi. “We can deal with Isis ourselves.”

Saturday’s march was a potent demonstration of the huge manpower that the Mahdi Army can still muster. Watching the parade from a fixed point on the route, The Telegraph counted around 1,000 men marching past in the space of just five minutes – and the parade lasted around two hours. While the organisers’ claim of a million men seemed unlikely, a ballpark figure of at least 30-50,000 seemed feasible.

The display also showed how the Mahdi Army has turned from a ragtag force of men dressed in T-shirts and tracksuits into a disciplined and professional militia.

Most of the units in the parade wore their own army fatigues and marched in neat formations, clutching assault rifles, sniper weapons and belt-fed machine guns. Others manned trucks mounted with home-made rocket launchers and artillery weapons. As well as men in uniform, there were volunteers from the Shia tribes of Iraq’s rural hinterland, some of whom rode horses and clutched ancient muskets. Many carried flags showing Moqtadr al-Sadr, the hardline Shia cleric who formed the Mahdi army back in 2003.

^{Mehdi Army fighters loyal to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr burn a U.S. flag during a parade in Baghdad’s Sadr city (Reuters)}

One column of troops brandished a series of different roadside bombs, including the Iranian “EFP” or explosively-formed projectile, an Iranian-made weapon used to devastating effect against coalition forces. The cylindrical device would fire a bolt of molten metal that could penetrate most British and American armoured vehicles, and proved to be one of the most effective insurgent weapons.

Despite the display of military might, those attending the parade were keen to stress that the Mahdi army wanted to avoid a return to the civil war of 2006-7, when its fighters engaged in vicious street battles with al-Qaeda backed Sunni guerrillas.

Officially, the units were mobilising under the name of “peace brigades”, formed only to protect Shia mosques and neighbourhoods from attack by Isis. Their commanders also claim that they are operating purely under government command.

“The Iraqi Army has their chain of orders and we operate within those, it would be chaos otherwise,” said Hakim al Zamili, a Sadr City MP who turned up at the parade in military fatigues.

However, the prospect of the Mahdi army getting directly involved against the Sunni militants of Isis does carry the risk of the conflict spiralling out of government control. With both sides accused of atrocities against each other during the 2006-7 civil war, the fear is that the “peace brigades” may not be peaceful for much longer.

 Isis allies ‘turn on jihadists’ as 17 killed in clashes

Elsewhere in Iraq, Sunni militants who fought together to capture swathes of Iraqi territory reportedly turned their weapons on each other during clashes in Kirkuk province that cost 17 lives, according to reports.

The fighting erupted on Friday evening between Isis and the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandiyah Order (JRTN) in Hawija, in Kirkuk province, sources told AFP.

There were differing accounts as to what sparked the firefight, which is a potential sign of the fraying of the Sunni insurgent alliance that has overrun vast stretches of territory north of Baghdad in less than two weeks.

 

^{Women watch Mehdi Army fighters loyal to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr take part during a parade in Basra, southeast of Baghdad (Reuters)}

One security official said JRTN fighters had refused an Isis demand to give up their weapons and pledge allegiance to the jihadist force.

Witnesses, however, told AFP the two sides clashed over who would take over multiple fuel tankers in the area.

Analysts have noted that while the Sunni insurgents, who are led by Isis but also include a litany of other groups including loyalists of now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein, have formed a wide alliance, it is unclear if the broader grouping can hold together given their disparate ideologies.

Isis espouses an extremist interpretation of Islam and wants to establish an Islamic state, whereas other armed groups have political differences with the regime in Baghdad, suggesting the alliance could eventually break down.

 Isis seizes key border Syria border crossing; 30 killed

Iraqi security officials said Sunni militants had seized a Syrian border crossing on Saturday after killing some 30 Iraqi troops in a day of clashes.

The officials said Saturday that Isis and allied militants seized the crossing near the border town of Qaim, about 200 miles west of Baghdad, after battling Iraqi troops throughout the previous day.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media.

^{Mahdi Marches in Baghdad take part in a parade in Kirkuk, north of Baghdad (Reuters)}

The capture of the Qaim border crossing deals a further blow to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, which has struggled to push back against Islamic extremists and allied militants who have seized large swaths of the country, including the second largest city Mosul, and who have vowed to march on Baghdad.

Sunni militants have carved out a large swath of territory astride the Iraqi-Syrian border and seized Iraq’s second largest city Mosul earlier this month.

Militants have long traveled back and forth across the porous border, but the control of crossings allows them to more easily move weapons and heavy equipment to different battlefields.

 Obama: Iraqi leaders allowed sectarian divisions to fester

The fall of the border crossing came asUS president Barack Obama said that Iraq’s conflict is the result of sectarian divisions that have been allowed to fester.

It is up to Iraq’s people and leaders to resolve those differences, said Obama.

“Some of the forces that have always possibly pulled Iraq apart are stronger now, [and] those forces that could keep the country united are weaker,” he told NBC Nightly News. “It is ultimately going to be up to the Iraqi leadership to try to pull the politics of the country back together again.”

Mr Obama is sending up to 300 US military advisers to Iraq and has threatened air strikes as Sunni Islamists have gained control of the north of the country and made a push toward Baghdad. Growing mistrust between Shia and Sunni Muslims has heightened tensions in the country, where the United States fought a war from 2003 to 2011, the president said.

Iraq’s prime minister Maliki faces mounting pressure to form an inclusive government or step aside, after a top Shiite cleric also strongly hinted he is in part to blame for the worst crisis since US troops withdrew from the country at the end of 2011.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most respected voice for Iraq’s Shiite majority, on Friday joined calls for al-Maliki to reach out to the Kurdish and Sunni minorities.

Al-Sistani normally stays above the political fray, and his comments, delivered through a representative, could ultimately seal al-Maliki’s fate.

Calling for a dialogue between the political coalitions that won seats in the April 30 parliamentary election, al-Sistani said it was imperative that they form “an effective government that enjoys broad national support, avoids past mistakes and opens new horizons toward a better future for all Iraqis.”

Al-Sistani is deeply revered by Iraq’s majority Shiites, and his critical words could force al-Maliki, who emerged from relative obscurity in 2006 to lead the country, to step down.

Large Horn Prepared To Help Small Horn (Daniel 8:3)

Iran ready to offer all kinds of help to Iraq: Velayati

Iranian Hegemony

Ali Akbar Velayati, a top advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei

Fri Jun 20, 2014 6:28AM

A senior Iranian official says the Islamic Republic will not hesitate to assist neighboring Iraq in its battle against Takfiri terrorists “without any limitation” upon Baghdad’s request.

In a Thursday interview with China’s CCTV television network, Ali Akbar Velayati, a top aide to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, said Iran was ready to provide Iraq with any kind of help if it is asked by the “legal” government in Baghdad.

Velayati further said the Islamic Republic will not cooperate with the United States over the crisis in Iraq as Tehran and Washington pursue different objectives in helping the Iraqi nation.

While Washington is after gaining dominance over Iraq by offering help to Baghdad, Tehran is not after “bad purposes” and does not seek to interfere in the crisis-hit country’s domestic affairs, said the Iranian official.

The Iranian official said if Washington truly intends to help Iraq counter the ongoing Takfiri violence, it should first condemn terrorism as well as the parties that support and fund the terrorists.

On June 10, militants from the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group captured Mosul, the capital city of Iraq’s Nineveh Province, which was followed by the seizure of Tikrit, located 140 kilometers (87 miles) northwest of the capital Baghdad.

Fierce clashes are going on between Iraqi armed forces and the ISIL militants, who have threatened to take their acts of violence to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, and other cities.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said his country is involved in a “war against terrorism,” stressing that Baghdad would not allow Nineveh to remain in the hands of terrorists.

MKA/NN

Mahdi Marches Into Baghdad

Iraq: Shia militia fighters parade in Baghdad
Last updated Sat 21 Jun 2014

Moqtada 1 missile

The fighters carried rocket-propelled grenades, semi-automatic rifles and trucks had mounted long-range rockets, including the new 3-metre “Muqtada 1″ missile, named after Shi’ite cleric Muqtada Sadr, who has tens of thousands of followers.

Fighters take part in a parade in Baghdad’s Sadr city. Credit: REUTERS/Ahmed Saad

Fighters loyal to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr take part during a parade Credit: REUTERS/Essam Al-Sudani

President Barack Obama has offered up to 300 U.S. special forces advisers to help the Iraqi government recapture territory seized by ISIL and other Sunni armed groups across northern and western Iraq.

Manifest Destiny: We Are Death

Oppenheimer: Now I Am Become Death

Is nuclear holocaust inevitable?  Can we back away from the cliff we have been anxiously gazing over for 70 years – or in many cases, simply trying to ignore? Some say there’s no turning back. The German philosopher Günther Anders noted, after his visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1958: “Now that humanity is is capable of destroying itself, nothing will ever cause it to lose this ‘negative all-powerfulness,’ not even a total denuclearization of the world’s arsenals. Now that apocalypse has been inscribed in our future as fate, the best we can do is to indefinitely postpone the final moment. We are living under a suspended sentence, as it were, a stay of execution – a reprieve.”

Not everyone is so pessimistic. California Governor Jerry Brown joined Stanford historian David Holloway, who studies atomic energy during the Cold War years; Stanford cryptologist Martin Hellman, known for his risk analysis studies on nuclear threats; and Stanford philosopher Jean-Pierre Dupuy, who writes about the nexus of ethics and technology, for a conversation on “The Nuclear Menace” this week. Jean-Pierre was the principal reason I accepted the invitation to the event in Stanford Libraries’ Bender Room. He credited the man he called his mentor, René Girard, for some of his insights, which were also drawn from his recent book, The Mark of the Sacred, from Stanford University Press.

It was a dynamite panel all round, and Jerry Brown’s presence was enormously cheering. Why a California governor on a panel discussing nuclear deterrence? Brown reminded the group that, decades ago during his first stint as governor, he had been nicknamed “Governor Moonbeam” for his tendency to roam outside “the very narrow range of permissible topics. … The end of humanity ought to be a permissible topic.”

Back to the “Mark of the Sacred”: Jean-Pierre described how, in our world, “rationality appears to have relegated all remnants of the religious mind to the past” and yet is still greatly influenced by it. “The problem is not to reconcile reason and faith. It is to recognize the marks of the sacred in the most outstanding and the most terrifying achievements of the rational mind.”

Wait a minute. That’s where René Girard’s influence comes in. “The sacred” is a term that carries a lot of baggage, but it’s used here in a very precise Girardian way. “The sacred” is the way archaic societies bonded through rituals of sacrifice and violence. Jean-Pierre reminded us that the Latin root of sacred is sacer, which gives two faces to the sacred: a saint on one hand, the accursed on the other; the veneration on one, an abomination on the other. “One of the marks of the sacred is radical ambivalence. It is infinitely good, as it protects us from our own violence; it is infinitely evil, as it is intrinsically violent.” Elements of the archaic persist into our postmodern era for, as Hellman noted, we have powers that were once considered godlike. ”Only God could destroy a city; we can do that now,” he said – but would anyone consider the human race godlike in its maturity? he asked. Crickets.

Our attitude towards nuclear weapons matches this ancient pattern: “Their only usefulness today is said to be the fact that they protect us from others using them against us. In Biblical terms: Satan casts out Satan, and he is the only one capable of casting out Satan, that is, himself,” said Jean-Pierre.

While our nuclear arsenals are said to protect us against nuclear war, their absence would arguably be an even greater deterrent – a modern paradox. Dupuy cited military strategist Bernard Brodie: “one of the foremost factors making deterrence really work and work well is the lurking fear that in some massive confrontation crisis it may fail. Under these circumstances one does not tempt fate.” Jean-Pierre considered the interplay of accident and fate in our nuclear future – Oedipus’s fate required an “accident” at the crossroads for fulfilment, said Jean-Pierre. We are now dealing with “blind mechanisms, which make human passions, moral categories, intentions and strategic planning obsolete,” he said. In today’s world, “it may be rational to pretend to be irrational.” For example, Putin seems to prefer a chaotic, dangerous Ukraine rather than a democratic one that tilts towards European integration. “Putin’s behavior is a powerful generator of unpredictability. Strategic or not, this card may trump all the others.”

According to Dupuy, a nuclear holocaust could occur even without hatreds or passions. He reminded us of the dozens of times we were on the brink of nuclear war during the Cold War. Anders anticipated a “paradise inhabited by murderers without malice and victims without hatred. … No war in history will have been more devoid of hatred than the war by tele-murder that is to come … this absence of hatred will be the most inhuman absence of hatred that has ever existed; absence of hatred and absence of scruples will henceforth be one and the same.” (Sounds like warfare by drones, doesn’t it?)

A nuclear holocaust can occur even if no one wills it, given the automatic human tendency of escalation to extremes, as military theorist Carl von Clausewitz noted, and as Girard elaborated in Battling to the End. The stakes that trigger such reactions can be ridiculously small – witness our entry into World War II, or the bickering between China and Japan over small islands in the Pacific. “All of this points to a new regime of violence in which human intentionality and human agency have become irrelevant.”

Dupuy noted,”Linking Auschwitz and Hiroshima, Hannah Arendt and Günther Anders probed the scandalous reality that immense harm may be caused by a complete absence of malignity; that a monstrous responsibility may go hand in hand with an utter absence of malice. Our moral categories, they discovered, are powerless to describe and judge evil when it exceeds the inconceivable.”

Philosopher David K. Lewis summarized the situation this way: “You don’t tangle with tigers – it’s that simple.” The “tigers” are our own violent tendencies. Luck, chance, fate, and the tiger “point to a world in which humanity itself has become irrelevant and miscalculation can carry the day.”

Another Girardian note during the question-and-answer period: Jean-Pierre suggested that not all nations, even belligerent ones, aim for the annihilation of the other – for example, Iran may not be nuking up to destroy Israel, but rather because, in mimetic fashion, nations imitate each other, and “to be taken seriously on the world scene, you have to be nuclear.” He recommended that we “sever the link between prestige and nuclear possession.”

Someone quoted Whole Earth Catalog’s Stewart Brand, who updated his comment from 40 years ago, “we are as gods, we might as well get good at it” to the more imperative ”what I’m saying now is we are as gods and have to get good at it.” Jerry Brown offered what might be considered an “action point” for the afternoon: “Techno-optimism is a view that leaves out the virtue of humility. Optimism can be as lethal as pessimism,” he said, recalling the Tower of Babel. “Humility is in short supply among scientists and politicians and others as well.”  Well, that’s something we can start working on today.

Mahdi Means Messiah

Escalating crisis drives surge in Iraq’s messianic movements

Author Ali Mamouri Posted June 19, 2014

The Mahdi Army Prepares For ISIS

Mehdi Army fighters loyal to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr march during a military-style training in Najaf, June 16, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Ahmad Mousa)

The radicalization of Iraqi politics that has contributed to the current crisis in the country can be better understood with an appreciation of the role of Islamic messianism, especially among Iraqi Shiites. This trend may even be more prominent, because if there is a battle for Baghdad, it will be fought along religious and sectarian lines.

 

Summary Political and economic hardships in Iraq have contributed to the rise of radical Messianic movements that claim to represent the return of the Mahdi.

The advent of saviors is one of the salient features of all Abrahamic religions, and is an idea that manifested itself differently in all three of those religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This idea grows and evolves throughout history, usually as a result of harsh social and political circumstances that drove people into seeking divine intervention from a heavenly emissary that would restore the tide of history back onto the righteous path.

In Islam, the concept of a savior appeared in the form of one of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandchildren named Mahdi, who would return at the end of times to save the world. The Shiites are not the only sect who believe in the Mahdi (the Guided One), for Sunnis also have similar — yet slightly different — beliefs that led to Sunni models of Mahdism. The latter includes the Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi movement (Al-Mahdiyya), which was established in Sudan in the 19th century, and the Juhayman al-Otaibi movement in Saudi Arabia, which occupied the Grand Mosque in Mecca for two weeks in 1979.

Mahdism garners greater acceptance and attraction in Iraq, where the social, political and economic tragedies that have befallen the country for a long time have led people to despair and seek solace in mythological solutions that promise salvation from widespread corruption and injustices. The Salafist tendencies that have permeated Shiite society in the past decades have strengthened the appeal of Mahdism in those societies and confirmed the imminent arrival of the Mahdi — a momentous event that those movements consider themselves responsible for paving the way for. Among the most prominent examples of this undertaking is the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which built its state on the basis that it represents the Mahdi, with the supreme leader who serves as deputy to the Mahdi, thus paving the way for the latter’s arrival.

In Iraq specifically, Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, Muqtada al-Sadr’s father, played a major role in reviving the idea of the Mahdi within Shiite society. Toward that end, Sadr wrote three large tomes that revolved around the concept of the Mahdi’s advent, imbuing them with modern details in the context of general political and military analyses that confirmed the arrival of the Mahdi as being imminent. The publishing of these tomes coincided with Sadr opening the doors of his religious school to large numbers of young people who came from southern provinces to study in Najaf, having grown despondent about the miserable political and economic situation that prevailed during the 1990s. The result was the emergence of a great potential to enshrine the Mahdist idea among Sadr’s pupils in subsequent years.

Notable among Mahdists is their anti-traditional view of religious schools, which can also be attributed to Sadr, who established the concept of a “vocal” Shiite seminary, instead of a silent one. He aimed to critique traditional religious schools that did not interfere in political affairs, and thus digressed from the true teachings of Shiism. This means that Sadr succeeded in merging Mahdist ideology with political Shiism and producing a dangerous form of Shiite Salafism, the consequences of which prominently took center stage after 2003.

The first of these consequences was the emergence of the Soldiers of Heaven, established by Diyaa Abdul Zahra al-Karaawi, who endowed himself with the title of “Heaven’s Judge.” Karaawi belonged to the Sadrist school of thought and claimed, in the 1990s, to be affiliated with Imam Mahdi, when he began developing his ideals during many travels to Iran and other countries. He also penned a book titled “Heaven’s Judge,” in which he claimed to be the direct son of Imam Ali, who miraculously traveled in time to the present day in the sense that the sperm of Imam Ali had been safely kept to be transferred to his mother. Beginning in 2003, Karaawi managed to attract many followers until his became a dangerous movement, establishing camps to train an army to prepare the world for the Mahdi’s resurrection. His initial plans included killing the grand Shiite authorities of Najaf for the negative role that they played in Shiite society, in keeping with the Sadrist idea of a nonsilent religious school of thought. Karaawi and his followers were killed in a major engagement with Iraqi forces backed by US troops in January 2007.

Concurrently, a man by the name of Ahmad Ismail Kateh established a Mahdist movement built on the premise that there were 12 Mahdis and not just one, and that he was one of those 12 and a grandson of Shiism’s famous Mahdi. Kateh succeeded in gaining many followers in Iraq and Iran as well. He leaned toward espousing cultural, rather than confrontational, ideals to avert the same fate suffered by the Heaven’s Judge. Despite that, his followers and the Iraqi government clashed on many occasions. He ultimately disappeared, and his representatives in major Iraqi Shiite cities — such as Karbala, Najaf and Basra — began making propaganda for him in religious schools known as the seminaries for supporters of Imam Mahdi.

A third Sadrist-inspired movement emerged, in which leaders did not outwardly claim to be the Mahdi, though they did resort to religious symbols that implied Mahdism. Most prominent among them was Mahmoud al-Hassani, also known as al-Sarkhi, who currently lives in Karbala, southwest of Baghdad. It is worth noting that “Sayyed al-Hassani” refers to a main personage in Shiite lore expected to pave the way for the Mahdi’s return.

Wide-ranging disagreements have now emerged between the latter two types of movements, leading to violent protests by both sides on May 15. The atmosphere remains charged between the two movements in many Shiite cities such as Karbala, Basra, Diwaniyah, Al Kout and others.

The Iraqi Shiite community still possesses great potential for the emergence of Mahdist movements, as a result of the difficult security and living conditions, the decrepit educational system — which fails to develop Iraqis’ rational thinking — in addition to the spread of ignorance, and the varied social and economic problems that continue to plague the country.

A New “Spin” On Iran’s Nuclear Negotiations

Iranian centrifuges

(Reuters) – Iran is refusing to significantly cut the number of centrifuges it intends to keep to produce nuclear fuel, making it hard to imagine a compromise at this week’s talks with six powers, Western and Iranian officials said on Wednesday.

The remarks from diplomats close to the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity, came after the initial rounds of meetings in the Austrian capital between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia plus Germany.

\They are striving for a deal that would limit Iran’s nuclear program, subject it to stricter U.N. inspections, lift sanctions impairing Iran’s oil-based economy and remove the risk of a wider Middle East war over the dispute.

But with time running out if a precarious extension of the talks past the self-imposed July 20 deadline is to be averted, the two sides remain far apart over the permissible future scope of Iranian nuclear activity.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle to overcome, six-power diplomats said, is Iran’s stance regarding its uranium-enrichment centrifuges, which one negotiator described as a “huge problem”.

Centrifuges are machines that spin at supersonic speed to increase the ratio of the fissile isotope in uranium. Low-enriched uranium is used to fuel nuclear power plants, Iran’s stated goal, but can also provide material for bombs if refined much further, which the West fears may be Iran’s latent goal.
“The Iranians have not yet shown a willingness to reduce their centrifuges to an acceptable number, making it difficult to envision a compromise at this point that we could all live with,” the negotiator told Reuters. Another Western official close to the talks confirmed the remarks as accurate.

A senior Iranian official seemed to confirm the assessment.

“Our Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) has set a red line for the negotiators and that cannot change and should be respected,” he told Reuters. “Uranium enrichment should be continued and none of the nuclear sites will be closed.

“What the West offers Iran on the number of centrifuges is like a joke and unacceptable,” he continued. “However, negotiation means trying to overcome disputes and it is what both sides are doing.”A senior U.S. official said on Monday that all disagreements must be cleared up for a long-term settlement with Iran to be clinched. “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”


CRIPPLING SANCTIONS

But Iran is also sending out clear signals that it wants an agreement with the six powers.

President Hassan Rouhani, whose administration has been pushing for improved relations with Washington after decades of antagonism, said in a televised speech that “if the world respects Iran’s nuclear rights, I think we can take the final step down the path to fully eliminate sanctions with ease.”
Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told journalists in Vienna that “both sides have consensus on two issues – continuation of Iran’s nuclear enrichment and lifting sanctions. But talks continue on the level and amount of the enrichment as well as the speed and time frame of lifting the sanctions.”

The United States, France, Britain and Germany would like the number of centrifuges Iran maintains to be in the low thousands, while Tehran wants to keep tens of thousands of them in operation. It now has about 19,000 installed, of which about 10,000 are spinning to refine uranium.

The more centrifuges Iran has in operation, the more quickly it would be in position to produce sufficient highly-enriched uranium (HEU) for an atomic bomb, if it were to choose to do so. Western powers want the time frame in which Iran could in theory produce atom bomb fuel to be stretched out as much as possible.

Tehran, however, rejects allegations from Western powers and their allies that it is seeking the capability to produce nuclear weapons, insisting its atomic ambitions are limited to peacefully generating electricity.

A U.S. security institute estimates that Iran could amass material for a nuclear bomb in three months or less while Iranian experts cite a time frame six times longer – a dispute that goes to the heart of the Vienna talks.

Iran has refused to heed U.N. Security Council demands to suspend its enrichment program, leading to crippling U.S., European Union and U.N. sanctions that have damaged the Iranian economy and sharply reduced oil exports from the OPEC member.

Centrifuges are not the only sticking point in this week’s talks, which are expected to run until Friday, diplomats say. Others include the types of centrifuges Iran uses, the speed of the lifting of sanctions and the expected duration of curbs that would be imposed on Iran’s nuclear activities.

Two other stumbling blocks are Iran’s planned Arak nuclear reactor – which Western officials suspect could be a source of plutonium, an alternative to HEU as bomb fuel – and Iranian clarification of intelligence indications that it researched how to design bombs in the past – something it also denies doing.

Diplomatic sources have told Reuters that it is increasingly probable Iran will seek a prolongation of the talks deadline. But Western officials insisted the focus now remained on sealing the deal by late July, noting that any extension must be agreed by all sides and would likely be short. “If there is an extension it will be for a few weeks,” a diplomat from one of the six powers told Reuters. If a deal were really within reach, the sides should not need six more months, the maximum extension approved under a preliminary deal Iran struck with the six powers in Geneva last November.