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2 Muqtada, the man who would be
ayatollah By Babak Rahimi
As a political and military force, Iraq's
Shi'ite Sadrist movement has undergone a number of
radical transformations since 2003, when its
leader Muqtada al-Sadr surprisingly emerged as a
leading political figure. Muqtada's recent
decision to continue with his seminary studies and
graduate as an ayatollah at the conservative
seminary school of Najaf underpins a major change
in the movement's structure that could have
serious repercussions for the future of Iraq.
Against the backdrop of changing political
alliances between Kurds and Sunnis, Muqtada is
transforming his movement into a new political
phenomenon with implications for the country's
political structure and security dynamics. The
consequences are
also
immense for Shi'ite Iraq, posing serious
challenges to the conservative clerical
establishment in Najaf.
Muqtada's attempt
to become an ayatollah follows his earlier call to
suspend operations by his militia, the Jaish
al-Mahdi (The Mahdi Army, or JaM) in the summer of
2007. Together with his decision to study in
Najaf, this has marked a decisive new beginning in
the organizational structure and leadership
dynamics of the Mahdi militia.
The
decision to suspend JaM was made largely because
of the outbreak of violence between Mahdi forces
and the rival Badr Organization in Karbala in
August 2007. The incident was a major
embarrassment for al-Sadr, who had been seeking
the support of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Shi'ite
Iraq's grand cleric, and the conservative
establishment in Tehran against the rebellious
splinter groups within his own militia since 2005.
The suspension, which came in August 2007,
was a way to ensure his Shi'ite partners that he
was willing to restructure his forces for the sake
of Shi'ite unity at a time when US - or Israeli -
forces seemed to be on the brink of starting a
major military conflict with Iran.
The
call was welcomed by al-Sistani, who had been
encouraging al-Sadr to arrive at such a decision
since January 200. The two met in June to discuss
the problem of JaM splinter groups.
Najaf
and Tehran both share an interest in containing
Muqtada and his militia, as well as bringing his
paramilitary organization - and other shadowy
anti-Najaf movements - under the control of the
Shi'ite clerical establishment. For Najaf and
Tehran, the best way to tame Muqtada is to chip
away at his popular base through the electoral
process and intra-Shi'ite negotiations, such as
the October 2007 cooperation pact with rival
Shi'ite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. This would,
accordingly, diminish his status as a charismatic
militant leader defiant of existing institutions.
Muqtada's decision to become an ayatollah,
along with his suspension of JaM, is an indicator
of more complex transformations occurring within
the Sadrist movement. Muqtada is not merely trying
to gain religious legitimacy by becoming an
ayatollah, but also access to a major source of
religious and financial capital that is primarily
under the control of high-ranking Shi'ite clerics
in Najaf. Since his family legacy alone would not
entitle him to what his father had acquired as a
senior jurist (marja taqlid, or "source of
imitation") in the 1990s, becoming an ayatollah
would guarantee Muqtada access to religious
capital that has been solely in the domain of
high-ranking clerics for centuries.
The
attainment of religious credentials through the
traditional seminary complex can provide Muqtada
with enhanced authority over spiritual matters,
such as the ability to issue a fatwa (religious
verdict) and control religious taxes, powers he
now lacks as a junior cleric. If successful,
Muqtada could extricate himself from the authority
of Najaf with its strict hierarchical set of power
relations and close familial ties to Iran and
beyond. It could also help him get rid of the
influence of Iranian-born clerics by refusing
al-Sistani's mentorship, instead studying under an
Afghan-born senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah, Shaykh
Ishaq Fayyaz.
Muqtada 's new political
strategy How could these developments
impact Iraq's security politics? First off, with
an inflated religious authority, Muqtada could
wield greater power in regions where he lacks
influence. In Basra especially, Muqtada prepares
to tackle his most powerful rival, the Badr
Organization, by propagating his new image in
tribal and urban regions of the province.
In a significant sense, Muqtada wants
legitimacy in places where he is mostly viewed as
a young cleric of low-ranking scholarly status. By
flexing his muscle as a high-ranking spiritual
leader, Basra may witness a new series of
conflicts between rival Shi'ite groups with equal
claim to religious legitimacy in the traditional
Shi'ite sense.
But Muqtada also aims to
consolidate his power by bringing together his
followers and identifying himself as their sole
spiritual leader. This would ultimately undermine
Sistani's influence among his younger followers
who may revere Muqtada but obey Sistani on matters
of religious and potentially political importance.
By further consolidating power in terms of
attaining religious authority, Muqtada is
preparing to revitalize his organization as a new
religious-political movement with a highly
centralized military branch. Under this new
leadership, the political branch of the Sadrist
movement will most likely be strengthened and the
unruly JaM subordinated to the civilian - ie
clerical - leaders of the movement.
Second, Muqtada 's rise to the rank of
ayatollah will reinforce his Iraqi identity. The
move towards nationalism should be seen as a way
to challenge the transnationalism of Najaf by
creating a new form of Shi'ite politics free from
non-Iraqi influence. Aside from their plans to
centralize control over oil reserves, one of the
reasons Muqtada and his parliamentarian
representatives have sided with the secular
National List of former prime minister Ilyad
Allawi and Sunni leader Salah al-Mutlak's National
Dialogue Front is to create a new parliamentary
bloc to challenge Najaf and its influence over the
four-party alliance of Nuri al-Maliki by carving
out a new political front of nationalist parties.
Muqtada is playing a delicate game of
balancing his position between nationalism and
sectarianism, though his appeal to Shi'ite
factionalism is mainly aimed at bolstering his
base where he is now seeking a new constituency
and a more centralized political movement.
The focus on a nationalistic leadership
strategy can also be attributed to the ongoing
political transformation of Sunni politics on the
parliamentary level. The new agreement signed
between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK),
the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Sunni
Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) - which led to the
formation of a new Kurdish-Sunni alliance - can
further push Muqtada to the nationalist camp.
With the possibility of Ninawa province
and the city of Mosul coming largely under the
administrative control of Iraqi Kurdistan - as one
of the key points of agreement between IIP leader
Tariq al-Hashimi and the Kurdish parties and the
ascendancy of Kurdish nationalism marked by
symbolic events like the display of a Kurdish flag
by the regional parliament of Kurdistan - Muqtada
and his followers are bound to move to the
nationalist and anti-federalist camp of the Iraqi
Parliament.
In this altered political
setting, the new JaM could emerge as a powerful
militia, a fully organized, disciplined
paramilitary force, vying not only for domination
over other Shi'ite militias in the southern
regions, but possibly challenging the Kurdish
militias in Baghdad and northern Iraq. Due to the
shadowy network apparatus of the militia, the
military might of the new JaM should not be
underestimated. It may help to better understand
how the new JaM may emerge as a new military force
by briefly reviewing its formation since 2003.
The transformation of a militia
When dozens of young Shi'ite volunteers
responded in June 2003 to a fiery call by the
maverick cleric to join JaM, the US administration
and the coalition authorities dismissed the new
paramilitary force as nothing more than a
nuisance. The militia, the Coalition Provisional
Authority argued, would disappear - along with the
insurgency - once the coalition troops completed
the process of de-Ba'athification and the
institutionalization of democracy in the country.
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