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2 The nightmare Bush dreads most
By Dilip Hiro
Public
opinion polls are valuable chips to play for those
engaged in a debate of national or international
consequence. In the end, however, they are
abstract numbers. It is popular demonstrations
which give them substance, color, and - above all
- wide media exposure, and make them truly
meaningful. This is particularly true when such
marches are peaceful and disciplined in a
war-ravaged country like Iraq.
This indeed
was the case with the demonstration on April 9 in
Najaf. Over a million Iraqis,
holding aloft thousands of national flags,
marched, chanting, "Yes, yes, Iraq/No, no,
America" and "No, no, American/Leave, leave
occupier."
The demonstrators arrived from
all over the country in response to a call by
Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shi'ite cleric, to
demand an end to foreign occupation on the fourth
anniversary of the end of Ba'athist rule in
Baghdad.
Both the size of the
demonstration and its composition were
unprecedented. "There are people here from all
different parties and sects," Hadhim al-Araji,
Muqtada's representative in Baghdad's Kadhimiya
district, told reporters. "We are all carrying the
national flag, a symbol of unity. And we are all
united in calling for the withdrawal of the
Americans."
The presence of many senior
Sunni clerics at the head of the march, which
started from Muqtada's mosque in Kufa, a nearby
town, and the absence of any sectarian flags or
images in the parade, underlined the ecumenical
nature of the protest.
Crucially, the
mammoth demonstration reflected the view prevalent
among Iraqi lawmakers. Last autumn, 170 of them in
a 275-member Parliament, signed a motion demanding
to know the date of an American withdrawal. The
discomfited government of Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki played a procedural trick by referring
the subject to a parliamentary committee, thereby
buying time.
Opinion polls conducted since
then show three-quarters of Iraqi respondents
demanding the withdrawal of the Anglo-American
troops within six to 12 months.
What
makes Muqtada tick? Though only in his
early thirties and only a hojatalislam
("proof of Islam") - one rank below an ayatollah
in the Shi'ite religious hierarchy - Muqtada
al-Sadr has pursued a political strategy no other
Iraqi politician can match.
The sources of
his ever-expanding appeal are: his pedigree, his
fierce nationalism, his shrewd sense of when to
confront the occupying power and when to lie low
and his adherence to the hierarchical order of the
Shi'ite sect, topped by a grand ayatollah - at
present 73-year-old Ali Sistani, whose opinion or
decree must be accepted by all those below him.
(For his part, Sistani does not criticize any
Shi'ite leader.)
Muqtada's father, grand
ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and two elder
brothers were assassinated outside a mosque in
Najaf in February 1999 by the henchmen of
president Saddam Hussein. The grand ayatollah had
defied Saddam by issuing a religious decree
calling on Shi'ites to attend Friday prayers in
mosques. The Iraqi dictator, paranoid about large
Shi'ite gatherings, feared these would suddenly
turn violently anti-regime.
Muqtada then
went underground - just as he did recently in the
face of the Bush administration's "surge" plan -
resurfacing only after the Ba'athist regime fell
in April 2003; and Saddam City, the vast slum of
Baghdad, with nearly 2 million Shi'ite residents,
was renamed Sadr City. As the surviving son of the
martyred family of a grand ayatollah, Muqtada was
lauded by most Shi'ites.
While welcoming
the demise of the Ba'athist regime, Muqtada
consistently opposed the continuing occupation of
his country by Anglo-American forces. When L Paul
Bremer, the American viceroy in Iraq, banned his
magazine al-Hawza al Natiqa ("The Vocal Seminary")
in April 2004 and American soldiers fired on his
followers protesting peacefully against the
publication's closure, Muqtada called for "armed
resistance" to the occupiers.
Uprisings
spread from Sadr City to the southern Iraqi holy
cities of Najaf and Karbala as well as four other
cities to the south. More than 540 civilians died
in the resulting battles and skirmishes. Since the
American forces were then also battling Sunni
insurgents in Fallujah, Bremer let the ban on the
magazine lapse and dropped his plan to arrest
Muqtada.
Later, Muqtada fell in line with
the wishes of Sistani to see all Shi'ite religious
groups gather under one umbrella to contest
parliamentary election. His faction allied with
two other Shi'ite religious parties - the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)
and al-Da'awa al-Islamiya (the Islamic Call) - to
form the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).
By so doing, in the face of
American hostility, Muqtada gave protective
political cover to his faction and its armed wing,
the Mehdi Army. (US officials in
Baghdad and Washington have long viewed Muqtada and
his militia as the greatest threat to
American interests in Iraq.) Of the 38 ministers in
Maliki's cabinet, six belong to the Sadrist
group. (On Monday, it was reported that the
six ministers would quit the government because Maliki had refused
to set a timetable for the withdrawal of
foreign troops.)
When the Pentagon mounted
its latest security plan for Baghdad on February
13 - aiming to crush both the Sunni insurgents and
Shi'ite militias - Muqtada considered discretion
the better part of valor. He ordered his Mehdi
militiamen to get off the streets and hide their
weapons. For the moment, they were not to resist
American forays into Shi'ite neighborhoods. He
then went incommunicado.
Muqtada's
decision to avoid bloodshed won plaudits not only
from Iraqi politicians but also, discreetly, from
Sistani, who decries
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