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2 Iraq's Sadrists follow Hezbollah's
path By Mahan Abedin
The success of Iran's policy in Lebanon,
where the Islamic Republic exerts extensive
influence through its local ally Hezbollah, has
raised the question of whether Iran can repeat the
same experience in war-torn Iraq.
If the
Islamic Republic is seeking to create a
Hezbollah-style ally in Iraq, its best partner
would be the Sadrist movement led by Muqtada
al-Sadr. But re-creating the Hezbollah experience
in Iraq is a daunting task that is likely to take
many years to bear fruit. The ill-disciplined and
fragmented Sadr movement is worlds apart
from
the iron-clad discipline and sophistication of
Lebanon's Hezbollah. And Muqtada is no Hassan
Nasrallah.
But despite these challenges,
the Sadr movement can be used by Iran to
consolidate its influence in a steadily
fragmenting Iraq and to manage hostilities with
the United States. The Islamic Republic excels at
developing and using non-state actors in unstable
countries, and war-torn Iraq provides Iran with
plenty of motivation to mobilize its unique skills
and resources for this purpose.
The
origins of the relationship between Iran and the
Sadr movement - like the origins of the Sadr
movement itself - are not altogether clear.
Certainly the Sadr legend dates to April 1980 when
Saddam Hussein's regime executed the legendary
Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr - the first major Shi'ite
religious authority to be executed by a modern
government. The prodigious Baqir al-Sadr is
regarded as the spiritual (if not organizational)
founder of Hezb al-Da'wa (Party of the Call), one
of the first Islamist groups to be formed in the
Arab world.
But as a coherent ideological
and organizational force, the Sadr movement began
to take form only after the late ayatollah
Mohammad Sadiq al-Sadr (a close relative of Baqir
al-Sadr) entered the political scene. In one of
the first major research articles on the origins
and nature of the Sadr movement, this author wrote
in July 2003:
The origins of the Sadrist movement
lie in the formation and dynamics of a
triangular relationship between the Iraqi
regime, the urbanized Shi'ite tribes and the
missionary activism of Mohammad Sadiq al-Sadr.
Alarmed by the Shi'ite uprising that erupted in
the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the
Iraqi regime began a process of co-opting and
privileging Shi'ite tribes - a significant
ideological retreat for the ruling Ba'ath Party,
which had spent the previous two decades
curtailing their influence. [1]
Mohammad Sadiq al-Sadr was radically
different from the legendary Baqir al-Sadr.
Whereas the latter was widely considered a genius
(he had been writing and lecturing on Islamic
history and doctrinal matters since the age of 10)
and a master theoretician and ideologue, the
latter was much more of an activist cleric with a
strong attachment to the tribal elements of Iraqi
Shi'ism. Indeed, Sadiq al-Sadr's main contribution
to the school of Shi'ite theology was his
controversial Fiqh al-Asha'ir (Tribal
Jurisprudence).
Initially, the former
Iraqi regime tolerated and even sponsored some of
the activities of Sadiq al-Sadr and his followers.
But this changed after Sadiq gained a mass
following and became one of the focal points of
opposition to the Ba'athist regime. In February
1999, Sadiq and two of his sons were killed by
unknown assailants in Najaf. It is widely believed
that Saddam loyalists were responsible for the
murders.
Sadiq al-Sadr's swift rise to
prominence in the 1990s had unsettled the
Iran-based Iraqi opposition that revolved around
the Abdul Aziz al-Hakim-led Supreme Council for
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI - recently
renamed the Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq) and
the various factions of Hezb al-Da'wa. Sadiq and
his followers had a low opinion of the Iran-based
opposition, which they viewed as at best
ineffective and at worst treacherous. For their
part, Hakim's followers and the remnants of the
old Da'wa organization highlighted Sadiq's alleged
ties to the former Iraqi government. Some went
even further and accused Sadiq of being an agent
of Saddam. These controversies remain unresolved
and continue to influence the complex divisions
that lie at the heart of Iraqi Shi'ite politics
today.
The Iranians rarely (if ever)
intervened in these disputes. The leading Iranian
organization that dealt with the Iran-based Iraqi
opposition was the Islamic Revolutionary Guards
Corps. The Ministry of Intelligence and National
Security also played an important, albeit
secondary, role in advising and supporting the
former Iraqi opposition. Both organizations saw
their role as neutral advisers and tried to stay
well clear of the politics and divisions between
the Iraqi organizations. If strong support was
expressed for any particular group, this was
usually done by Iranian individuals and
religious-charitable organizations acting in a
private capacity.
Nevertheless, the
Iranians could not have been too pleased by the
rise of Sadiq al-Sadr, who posed a threat not only
to the traditional Shi'ite Islamist opposition but
to the Shi'ite Marjayeeat (Shi'ite clerical
establishment) in Najaf itself. Sadiq al-Sadr
championed Arab dominion in the seminaries of
Najaf, which has traditionally been dominated by
senior clerics who are either Iranian-born or at
least of Iranian descent. This position on its own
was deeply alarming to the grandees of the
religious seminaries of Qom, if not the Iranian
security establishment and their political
masters.
The downfall of Saddam in April
2003 allowed Sadiq al-Sadr's youngest son, Seyed
Muqtada al-Sadr, to emerge from hiding and
publicly claim the Sadrist mantle. Within a few
months the young Muqtada had emerged as a powerful
force in occupied Iraq, attracting large swaths of
tribal and poor urban Shi'ites. Muqtada employed
populist rhetoric and vociferously attacked the
occupation and "those who benefit from it" (a
veiled reference to the former SCIRI and the
remnants of the Da'wa party).
Muqtada and
his closest followers quickly established a
near-fiefdom in the Shi'ite suburb east of Baghdad
formerly known as Saddam City, but unofficially
known by its original name, Madinat al-Thawra
(City of the Revolution). Madinat al-Thawra was
quickly renamed Madinat al-Sadr (Sadr City). Sadr
City is the epicenter of the Sadr movement and has
in the past four years developed into one of the
main pillars of Shi'ite Islamist power in
post-Saddam Iraq. The district is an ideal place
for the growth of "a state within a state".
Originally built in the 1960s to absorb mostly
Shi'ite immigrants from the south of the country
and promote their assimilation, the
20-square-kilometer district's self-enclosed
economy and its psychological, cultural and
geographic separation from the rest of Baghdad
have had the opposite effect of reinforcing the
tribal and sectarian identities of its
inhabitants, who number close to 3 million.
Although Muqtada initially adopted an
anti-Iranian position, this was more a reflection
of the Sadr movement's misgivings toward the
former SCIRI and Hezb al-Da'wa than toward Iran
itself. In any case, Muqtada's trip to Iran in
June 2003 had the immediate effect of softening
his anti-Iran rhetoric. While in Iran, Muqtada was
courted by various state, semi-official and
private religious-charitable organizations. The
warm welcome given to the young and inexperienced
Muqtada was, at the time, met with widespread
skepticism by Iranian journalists who questioned
their government's wisdom in welcoming an unknown
upstart. Nearly four years on - and with Muqtada
and his movement widely recognized as the most
important center of power in Iraq - the skeptics
have been proved wrong.
If Iran had
minimal influence over Muqtada in the immediate
aftermath of the invasion of March-April 2003, the
situation changed rapidly after Muqtada's trip to
Iran that June. In fact, the situation has changed
so much that many Iraqis (including a substantial
number of Shi'ites) regard the Sadr movement as an
extension of the Islamic Republic in Iraq. While
this is clearly an exaggeration, there is no
denying the fact that Iran (at both official and
private levels) wields significant influence over
all the components of the core Sadr movement.
The greatest catalyst behind the growth of
Iranian influence has been the steady
fragmentation of the Sadr movement. While
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