Page 2 of 2 Muqtada: The born-again
mullah By Sami Moubayed
their necks out for him were Iraqi
Shi'ites. Before establishing himself as a serious
Iraqi leader (his young age did not help), as he
is trying to do today, he had to make a name as a
Shi'ite one. In a certain way, he wanted to do
what Hassan Nasrallah - his friend and idol - had
done in Lebanon with Hezbollah.
Nasrallah
started off as a local Shi'ite chief in 1992 and
over a 15-year period managed to establish himself
as a pan-Lebanese, and
eventually pan-Arab, statesman
and leader, matched by none in the Arab world
except Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt. If Nasrallah
is the next Nasser, then Muqtada wants to be the
next Nasrallah.
Today, Muqtada is
expanding his power base and trying to write off
his sectarian past and build bridges with the
Sunnis, to repeat what Nasrallah did in Lebanon.
Hezbollah started off in 1982 as a Shi'ite
organization that was funded by Iran and planned
to establish an Iran-style theocracy in Beirut.
With time, its agenda, and image, changed in the
minds of the Lebanese.
Muqtada's Shi'ite
credentials are no longer in question, if they
ever were, and he is probably the most popular
Shi'ite leader in Iraq, matched only by the old
and wise Sistani. He is a man of the masses,
popular within the slums of Baghdad and among the
urban poor, who see him as an honest, dedicated,
and uncorrupted nationalist who does not seek
political office or wealth, only the freedom of
his country and respect for his community.
He has arms, a large following (estimated
at more than 60,000 armed men), family heritage
(his father and uncle were famous leaders), and
religious legitimacy (being a "Sayyed" because of
being a direct descendent of the Prophet
Mohammed). After having disappeared from public
life for nearly three months this year, Muqtada
re-emerged a few weeks ago, almost reborn. The
first thing he did was dismiss 11 commanders of
his Mahdi Army (Jaysh al-Mahdi), because they had
been involved in illegal conduct during his
absence, such as kidnapping Sunni notables.
When members of the Mahdi Army seized
Sunni neighborhoods in south and west Baghdad,
trying to uproot their residents, Muqtada
condemned and disavowed the attack through his
spokesman Salah al-Obaidi. The latter said that
local commanders in the Bayaa and Amil
neighborhoods had acted on their own instinct,
without orders from Muqtada. The spokesman added,
"Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr refuses all kind of
violence and he refuses to answer violence with
violence."
That is new talk for the
Sadrists, who used to answer violence with - to
say the least - double violence. If authentic, it
is evidence that Muqtada is in fact a reborn man.
The fact that elements from Muqtada's following
might have acted without authorization from him
were confirmed by Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Garver,
the US military spokesman, who said: "We have seen
a fracturing of Jaysh al-Mahdi in the last few
months. We see elements acting on their own. He
may be trying to prevent that. It could be a
positive thing for Iraq, the coalition, and the
Iraqi people or it could be a negative thing,
depending on how these new leaders are going to
behave."
The record of the Sadrists over
the past few weeks has shown that they indeed have
been behaving themselves - especially after the
new bombings in Samarra. Another Muqtada aide,
Abdul-Hadi al-Mohamaddawi, who heads Muqtada's
office in Karbala, added, "Many of the people in
the Sadr trend are not real Sadrists and they
don't have a real belonging to the Sadr front.
They corrupted the reputation of the Sadr office."
Muqtada himself had repeated that in an
interview with the government daily Al-Sabah early
this month, saying that the Mahdi Army is not a
political party but a populist movement "with the
good and the bad" in it. Last week, he gave
another interview to Iraqi television, blaming all
of Iraq's troubles on the Americans and praising
the Sunnis and Shi'ites who collaborated to fight
al-Qaeda.
Muqtada is working to please not
only the Sunnis but the Kurds as well. On Monday,
he sided with the Kurds against Turkey, which is
amassing troops on Iraq's northern border,
threatening to invade Iraqi Kurdistan to root out
Kurdish nationalists. Although Muqtada is
ideologically opposed to the Kurdish district -
and distrustful of the Kurds at large because of
their good relations with the Americans - he
nevertheless cannot let his own views get in the
way of becoming a pan-Iraqi leader. Muqtada warned
Ankara on the bombing of Iraqi Kurdistan: "We will
not be silent in front of this threat." This came
after Turkey had shelled villages in Dohuk, a
northern province of Iraq.
Last week,
Muqtada visited Sistani at his home in Najaf. The
meeting was ostensibly to inquire on Sistani's
health. The elder cleric had announced last year
that he would halt his political consultations
because he was being overshadowed by younger,
radical, and unwise politicians (in clear
reference to Muqtada, although he did not mention
him by name). It was believed then that Sistani
was saddened by how popular Muqtada was becoming
at his own expense.
At times of war,
Iraqis need the protection that Muqtada offers,
not wise words from the venerable Sistani. When a
young Shi'ite complains to Sistani that his
brother had been killed, for example, the
ayatollah reads him a few phrases from the Koran,
then tells him to go report to the police. That
has little effect on angry young Shi'ites,
especially in a region where revenge is so
deep-rooted in Arab culture. When a similar case
occurs with Muqtada, he not only promises revenge
but actually takes it.
That pleases young
Iraqis and explains why Muqtada's clout would be
increasing at the expense of Sistani. The latter's
seclusion lasted for some time but he has recently
re-emerged and still gives occasional advice on
matters related to politics, concentrating more,
however, on religious, social and philosophical
affairs. The importance of the Sistani-Muqtada
meeting (the first since Muqtada re-emerged from
three months in hiding) was in how the Sadrists
reported it to the media.
The Sadrists
depicted their leader and Sistani as equals, "two
religious authorities". The difference in titles,
ranks, history and legitimacy was glossed over by
the Sadrist media. They were there to consult as
partners in the Shi'ite community and not, as one
would expect, to hear out the grand ayatollah's
views. That is testimony to how "involved" and
active Muqtada is in creating a new image for
himself, not only as an Iraqi nationalist, but as
a religious heavyweight as well, in the Shi'ite
community.
Clearly, Muqtada al-Sadr is
very serious about his new image, and the days to
come will witness more gestures - both symbolic
and tangible - to prove to the world that he is
not just a Shi'ite nationalist.
Sami
Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
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