The insurgency by followers of radical Shi'ite
leader Muqtada al-Sadr has claimed the lives of at least
a dozen coalition troops and scores of Iraqis this week.
It also has set off a fierce verbal campaign on both
sides aimed at swaying Iraqi and international public
opinion.
A typical broadside from al-Sadr's camp
- delivered by one of the cleric's aides, Qays
al-Khazali - took this form: "The uprising will continue
until our demands are met, and if US forces continue
this escalation against the Iraqi people, the uprising
will spread until it reaches Kurdistan in the north."
Muqtada's immediate demands are that the
coalition withdraw all forces from populated areas and
free his arrested supporters. Muqtada welcomed the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein last year, but has since
refused to recognize the US-led occupation and does not
cooperate with the Washington-appointed Iraqi Governing
Council.
But if Muqtada's group is intent on
trying to convince the public that its armed insurgency
will soon spread across Iraq, coalition leaders are just
as determined to portray the ongoing fighting as the
work of a small and isolated minority of malcontents.
The top US administrator in Iraq, L Paul Bremer,
told a US television network that Muqtada's supporters
are an "illegal militia run by an outlaw". "It is not a
Shi'ite uprising. It is a militia, an illegal militia,
run by an outlaw, a group of people who have attacked,
first and foremost, Iraqis - Iraqi police, Iraqi army,
the Iraqi civil defense force, and coalition forces and
Americans," Bremer said. "And we will deal with them.
That is not the view of the majority of the Shi'ites."
The war for public opinion is likely to escalate
further in the coming days as Washington vows to arrest
Muqtada in connection with the murder of a rival Shi'ite
cleric last year. But Muqtada has taken shelter in his
office near a complex surrounding one of the holiest
Shi'ite shrines - the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf. The
mosque is the burial place of Ali, the son-in-law of the
Prophet Mohammed, who is a central figure in Shi'ism.
From the safety of that sensitive location,
Muqtada has sought to present himself as the unifying
symbol of the Iraqi insurgency.
He has expressed
hope that "Sunni brothers will succeed in liberating
their region", a clear reference to the ongoing battle
between coalition forces and anti-US fighters in
Fallujah. There has been no clear reply from Sunni
insurgents, who are generally believed to be loyalists
of the Saddam regime, which oppressed the Shi'ite
majority. But press reports have quoted Muqtada
supporters as saying they have been joined in some
street battles by Sunni militants.
At the same
time, Muqtada tried to paint himself as acting in tandem
with preeminent Shi'ite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani. Muqtada said that "I proclaim my solidarity
with Ali Sistani, and he should know that I am his
military wing in Iraq and wherever he so desires".
Behind this war of words, how much support does
Muqtada have, and could his appeal grow even further?
Analysts say Muqtada - a 30-year-old midlevel cleric -
is now at a crossroad. Despite his proclamation of
solidarity with Sistani, he has not gained the support
of the grand ayatollah, who has issued calls for calm
instead.
A representative of Sistani repeated
those calls on Wednesday as he visited Muqtada in Najaf.
Shaykh Abd al-Mahdi al-Karbalai said: "We appeal for
calm and restoration of public order, and we hope to
settle this problem peacefully." The representative also
said that "dialogue was possible" and that "firing
without any reason was not justified".
Sistani's
opinions carry the weight of law within the Shi'ite
community, but Sadr's camp did not say whether the
younger cleric will bow to the ayatollah's wishes.
Neil Partrick, a regional specialist at the
Economist Intelligence Unit in London, says that Muqtada
is not likely to win mainstream Shi'ite support without
Sistani's backing. But the analyst says there is a
danger that any US crackdown on the insurgency that
inflicts high casualties could severely test Sistani's
ability to maintain calm.
"Ali Sistani has made
it clear that he does not and continues to oppose the
use of armed action and believes in negotiation. His
difficulty is, of course, that in the context of dealing
with the insurgency, military action has been taken of a
fairly heavy-handed nature in some places, and this
arouses fellow feeling among Shi'ites," Partrick said.
Partrick continued: "But I think there are few
signs that although there will be sympathy for Muqtada
and certainly for the deaths of ordinary Shi'ites in the
context of this campaign, there are few signs that
majority Shi'ite opinion or indeed the Shi'ite religious
and political leadership that is primarily working with
the US coalition forces will actually go over to
supporting violent insurrection. There are frustrations
with the political timetable, but ultimately, of course,
it leads to elections and effectively to majority
Shi'ite rule - and that is not something which most
Shi'ite wish to upset."
Relations between
Sistani and Muqtada are complicated in part by the fact
that the younger cleric has sought to boost his stature
in the Shi'ite community at the older leader's expense.
The two men head rival networks of religious
foundations. Muqtada inherited his position when his
father, a grand ayatollah of equal stature to Sistani,
was assassinated by agents of Saddam in 1999.
The young cleric has previously harshly
criticized Sistani's camp as being too passive in the
face of the US occupation. Sistani has always refused to
meet directly with US authorities but approves of
Shi'ite parties participating in US-led efforts to
create a democratic system in Iraq.
But even if
prospects appear slim that Muqtada's insurgency will
dramatically widen, it remains far from clear whether
arresting the cleric will put an end to his political
career.
Analysts at two US military schools
warned that extracting Muqtada from his office in the
holy city of Najaf and placing him behind bars could
only bolster the image he has sought to build of being a
leading nationalist figure.
Vali Nasr, a
professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at
the Naval Postgraduate School in California, said
Washington has to be very "watchful" about the way it
detains Muqtada. Nasr told Reuters that "already the
idea of a young man, a cleric, standing up for justice
against an overwhelming military machine has a lot of
Shi'ite symbolism." He added: "The US has to be very
watchful [about] going into a Muslim shrine, going into
Najaf [to arrest him]."
W Andrew Terrill, a
national security research professor at the Army War
College's Security Studies Institute in Pennsylvania,
agreed. Terrill said that "to the extent [Muqtada] can
mold [an arrest] into the propaganda that, 'I'm the one
who's really fighting for Iraqi nationalism, while
everyone else is collaborating', it's going to make his
standing within Iraqi politics much more formidable."
Charles Recknagel is a senior
correspondent for Gulf Affairs and related issues in
Prague. He has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, and Turkey, among other countries, and written
extensively on Iran.
Copyright (c) 2004,
RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut
Ave NW, Washington DC 20036
