Once Again, I'm in Trouble with My Only Friend

by Eric Martin

Like Dr. iRack, I found Dexter Filkins' review of Patrick Cockburn's new book on Moqtada al-Sadr to be well worth the read (don't agree with everything Filkins or Cockburn write, but overall, insightful). This is a pretty good summary of the persistent condition of ignorance vis-a-vis Sadr that has been so prevalent amongst US policymakers:

Muqtada al-Sadr stands for everything in Iraq that we do not understand. The exiles we imported to run the country following Saddam's fall are suave and well-dressed; Muqtada is glowering and elusive. The exiles parade before the cameras in the Green Zone; Muqtada stays in the streets, in the shadows, surfacing occasionally to give a wild sermon about the return of the hidden twelfth imam. The Americans proclaim Muqtada irrelevant; his face adorns the walls of every teashop in Shiite Iraq. The Americans attack; Muqtada disappears. The Americans offer a deal, and Muqtada responds: only after you leave.

Who is Muqtada al-Sadr? What does he want? And how many divisions does he have? That we know so little so late about someone so central to the fate of Iraq is an indictment of anyone associated with the American endeavor there. But it is also a measure of Iraq itself: of its complexity, its mutability, its true nature as an always-spinning kaleidoscope of alliances, deals, and double- crosses. Muqtada al-Sadr is not merely a mirror of our ignorance, he is also a window onto the unforgiving land where we have seen so many of our fortunes disappear.

Administration policymakers have ignored, underestimated and prematurely written off Sadr since before the invasion (when few, if any, even knew who he was), to immediately after the invasion (when he was dismissed as an insignificant rabble rouser not worthy of attention), through a series of clashes with US forces and subsequent poltical maneuvers (after and during which Bush administration officials and their supporters have proclaimed Sadr and his movement dead so many times that cat's stare in awe at his innumerable lives).

Even now, there is much buzz about the impact of the recent anti-Sadr operations in Basra and Sadr City - with many pointing to the fact that Iraqi government forces are in both places as a sign of Sadr's diminishing relevance. I would caution against putting too much stock into that reading.

Some basic facts to consider: the Sadrist trend is generally estimated as comprising between 3-5 million Iraqis. That would put his movement in the range of 15-20% of the entire Iraqi population (especially when you consider that, due to the relatively modest means of his constituents, few Sadrists were among the massive exodus of some 2 million wealthier Iraqis that fled the country as refugees).

Though not a cleric yet himself, Moqtada is the heir to a well respected and immensely popular clerical lineage that dates back many decades (his father and father's cousin were extremely influential Grand Ayatollahs). Beyond the sheer numbers of his constituency, Sadr represents a social movement (and an effective network that distributes vital services to millions of poorer Iraqis) and brand of religious millenarianism (Mahdism) that has a rich and lengthy tradition throughout Iraq's Shiite-dominated south (the latter, with literally centuries of history). The Fadhila Party that dominates Basra is itself an off-shoot of the Sadrist trend that emerged after the assassination of Moqtada's father - just to give you a sense of its reach.

Thus, it is entirely unrealistic to believe, as the Bush administratoin apparently does, that the Sadrist trend can be neutralized militarily, or marginalized through intra-Shiite political maneuvering. Despite recent gains made against Sadr's militia, Sadr's endgame involves exerting his considerable influence via the ballot box and through popular appeals. The US would be far better served by coming to grips with his clout and attempting to normalize relations with his movement, rather than trying to ignore it or adopt policies that amount to wishful thinking. If the US continues to target Sadr and his followers, in the end, such hostility will only harden anti-American attitudes, radicalize the Mahdist movement (and cause dangerous splinter groups to break off) and help weaken one of the truly nationalistic, anti-Iranian forces in Iraqi Shiite politics.

That last point, I would say, represents the other great misunderstanding about the Sadrist movement - its reputed ties to Iran. Actually, I'm not sure it's a misunderstanding as much as useful propaganda adopted by the Bush administration in order to further a political agenda (permanent bases, heavy foreign involvement in the oil industry) that Sadr opposes. In this, the Bush administration has made common cause with Iraqi political parties (ISCI/Dawa) that have much stronger ties to Iran than Sadr. But that is a rather inconvenient and awkward position, so instead of acknowledging the reality of the situation, we adopt a fictitious narrative. But there is a potential for self-fulfilling prophesy: in targeting and isolating Sadr, we are pushing him closer to Iran by denying him viable alternatives.

I haven't had the time to read Cockburn's book on Sadr yet, but I have read this extremely informative piece by Reidar Visser. Visser's work is a valuable tool in overcoming the ignorance surrounding Sadr and his movement that Filkins describes. I'll post an excerpt below the fold that touches on some of the issues mentioned above, but I highly recommend the entire piece.

The problem in this is the character of the "rejection of Iran" referred to by Bush as a supposed attribute of the Maliki government. A brief glance at photos of the frequent and amicable meetings between top ISCI officials and Iranian leaders immediately sows doubts about the realities of that "rejection." Similarly, studies of the run-up to the Basra operations against the Sadrists show that some of the "Iraqi" parties routinely accused of having intimate links to the Iranian revolutionary guards - such as the Sayyid al-Shuhada movement - played a role alongside ISCI in instigating the Maliki government to escalate its operations against the supposedly "pro-Iranian" Sadrists. Only weeks prior to the operations, the only Iraqi group that was talking about pushing its enemies "back to Iran" was the Sadrists. By April, even mainstream Western media reports suggested, albeit belatedly, that perhaps ISCI and their scheme of a single Shiite federal region could after all be Iran's number one priority in Iraq. In short, there is still very little hard evidence that indicates any change in the longstanding historical image of ISCI as Iran's primary partner in Iraq and the Sadrists as Iran's primary challenge - a situation with which Tehran deals shrewdly through dividing and ruling the Sadrists as much as possible through the creation of "special" splinter groups (about which Sadrists complained as early as in April 2007), while at the same time maintaining fallback strategies, such as operating a television channel in Arabic (al-Alam) that allows articulation of both the Sadrist and the ISCI point of view.

Nevertheless, US policy has been the logical opposite of Tehran's strategy of spreading the bets, namely, to persevere with one particular set-up - a coalition of "sectarian moderates" supposedly representing an imagined trinity of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. But two out of the three main components of this coalition (i.e. the "Shiite" ISCI and the "Sunni" Tawafuq) enjoy only limited popular backing in the constituencies they purport to represent. Despite all the spin, key Sunni and Shiite groups outside the government (including for instance Fadila) remain sceptical of Maliki's methods against the Sadrists, and while Basrawis certainly seem to appreciate the strengthened presence of the Iraqi army in their area, this in itself does not mean that support for the Maliki coalition as a political force is growing. Even the higher ranking ulama (and Sistani himself) have reportedly signalled that any move to marginalize any particular party in the next elections would be unacceptable. Against this background, the emerging US reconstruction project in Iraq increasingly comes across as a colossus with feet of clay: only Kurdistan is being represented in government by politicians who enjoy widespread popular backing; substantial segments of the Arab population are either being bombed into submission (the Sadrists) or bribed and armed (the Sunnis) instead of becoming genuinely integrated in national politics; finally, in the absence of a grand political compromise that could secure durable peace and healing across sectarian divides, Iraq's capital city itself is being compartmentalised with concrete barriers, despite complaints by many Iraqis who think that physical separation is no adequate substitute for true reconciliation.

Despite all this, Washington consistently refuses to rethink its basic choice of Iraqi partners (ISCI and the Kurds), and appears to continue to eschew any serious contact with those Shiite groups in Iraq that "reject" Iran - Bush's term - in a far more convincing manner: the Fadila party, "moderate" Sadrists and independent Shiite figures (both secularists and Islamists) who all repeatedly have made calls for assistance against Iranian infiltration in Iraq's security forces, and have asked for help to cope with the pressures they are being exposed to due to their anti-Iranian attitudes. More plausible approximations of the dictionary definition of "rejection" include accusing Iran of death threats (as the Fadila governor of Basra has repeatedly done), criticising the "Iranian occupation of Iraq" to the press (a frequent complaint by Fadila members of the Basra council), accusing Shiite parties of having their headquarters in Iran (the latest charge by Wail Abd al-Latif, a Shiite secularist from Basra) or even setting fire to the Iranian consulate in Basra (followers of the small Sadrist group of Mahmud al-Hasani have reportedly been involved in this). But despite a catalogue of political demands that are shared by a high number of independent experts on Iraqi affairs - a timetable for US withdrawal, a negotiated settlement of Kirkuk, early provincial elections, prudence in the federalism question - such genuinely anti-Iranian elements among the Shiites continue to receive very limited attention from the United States, whether from Democrats or Republicans.

The ironic result is that in the end, even these Shiite Iraqi nationalist groups will have nowhere else to go than Iran. It is of course understandable that Washington may dislike the prospect of Muqtada al-Sadr's strict Islamism becoming ascendant in the new Iraq. But that kind of reasoning misses the point in three ways. In the first place, the main Shiite alternative, ISCI, has been equally involved in the Islamisation of Iraq after 2003, even if they are more professional than the Sadrists in handling their reputation when they deal with the Western media, and sometimes also rely on proxy-like groups, like "Hizbollah in Iraq" and Tharallah.

Secondly, the Sadrists can offer something to other Iraqis which ISCI is unable to deliver due to its insistence on a Shiite federal region: national reconciliation that would appeal to a majority of Sunnis. (If Maliki is serious about dialogue with the Sunnis, he should stop boasting about "going after the Sadrists" and instead start pressuring ISCI to take the scheme for a Shiite federal region off the agenda.) And thirdly, to include the Sadrists in the political process is not the same as making Muqtada al-Sadr the next premier of Iraq, and also does not imply a green light to the sort of extremist vigilantism perpetrated by Sadrists in Basra. Rather, the most likely outcome would be a change in the dynamics of Iraqi politics, back to a more nationalist and centrist atmosphere. This in turn could bring to the fore new leaders and new political formulas that simply do not have a chance in today's Iraq, where the political game is largely controlled by a minority of returned exiles who insist on a more sectarian, ethno-federal approach to Iraqi politics. It would be the sort of change that could produce a new Iraq more in touch with the long lines of its own history and hence more stable; dialogue with the Sadrists is as central to this kind of outcome as negotiations with Hamas is in the Palestinian question and as engagement with Hizbollah is in Lebanon.

Finally, it is high time that Washington understands that Muqtada al-Sadr was driven to Iran in 2007 as the result of threatening US policies, not as a consequence of any longstanding warm relations between him and Tehran. More mistakes like this could deprive the United States of one of the last chances to salvage the political process in Iraq, and might also unleash some of the most destructive forces that exist in southern Iraq. The consequences for the geopolitics of the world's largest belt of oil resources could be devastating.

Comments

[MH]

Is that a Radiohead reference? Bravo, now I need to go relisten to Kid A and Amnesiac...

[Eric Martin]

Indeed twas. Actually one of my favorites off Amnesiac.

[Nell]

Eric, please add your byline at the top of your posts.

[hilzoy]

Reading this story from a few days ago, I was struck by, of all things, the parallels between Moqtada and Bush:

"Sadr, the third of four sons, was born in Najaf into one of the most revered clerical families in Shiite Islam. His father's cousin, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr, was an adored religious figure who founded a school of thought that became the Sadrist movement, which argued that the clergy should actively engage in politics to aid the downtrodden Shiite masses. When he was tortured and killed in 1980 by Saddam Hussein's government, Moqtada's father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, also a grand ayatollah, took his place as the head of the movement and became a chief opponent of Hussein's rule.

Moqtada at first attended public schools, but around ninth grade he switched to the hawza, the seminary in Najaf that is the center of Shiite learning, in part because he struggled with his studies, neighbors said. He earned the nickname Moqtada Atari because of his love of video games.

"His brain was thick," said Abu Hawra, 47, a merchant in the Hannaneh neighborhood, where Sadr grew up, who would not give his full name. "His father used to complain a lot about his attendance at school. Moqtada was the source of great concern and discomfort for his father."

Two brothers, Mustafa and Muammal, were considered the heirs apparent to the family legacy. "His father used to consider them his right and left arm," Abu Hawra said. Another son, Murtada, reportedly suffers from long-standing medical problems.

Moqtada, his friends said, has always been a prankster, in ways both innocuous and macabre. Once, he made a big show of offering a 7-Up to a student, who was then surprised to learn that Sadr had filled the bottle with water. In a more recent incident, he anonymously sent Shaibani, the aide, text messages threatening to kill him, only to reveal later with laughter that it was all a practical joke.

Sadr, known in his youth for stuffing himself with as many as a dozen falafel at a time, was treated no differently than other students in the seminary, according to neighbors. (...)

Then, on Feb. 19, 1999, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr and his two sons, Mustafa and Muammal, were assassinated by machine-gun-toting men. Moqtada was propelled into the leadership of the movement."

I was going to blog it, but somehow didn't get around to it.

[Eric Martin]

Sorry Nell. Still not used to that extra step.

[aimai]

I was struck with the similiarity I see between Moqtada's conservative, anti foreign anti elite brand of political action and that described by Thomas Franks for the "con cons" in Kansas. Bush et al went for the group of the most moderate/assimilated Iraqis they could find and thought that this group could represent and control a much larger group of lower/working class Iraqis with utterly different interests and culture. Boy were they wrong--in a democratic system, or an anarchic system with lots of armed bodies, the person who speaks to the dreams and fantasies of the largest number of voters/gun owners is going to win hands down. Its bodies, bodies, bodies that matter. People like Bush who rode into town on the backs of a manufactured enthusiasm and duped voters simply have no idea what it takes to really create and control a grassroots movement and they have no real appreciation for grassroots movements and their enthusiasms and their power.

aimai

[Eric Martin]

aimai, that is a great, great comment.

[Nell]

@Eric: Just trying to fulfil my role of being a polite scourge. ;> You've remembered more often than you've forgotten.

hilzoy, thanks for that excerpt. Some parallels are there, clearly, but to me the big difference in how the troubled son comes to power dwarfs them. The powerful father and the successful brothers being wiped out in an instant, thrusting power onto the unlikely successor... versus the powerful father and the successful brothers engineering the nowhere near-as-capable son's rise to the top.

[aimai]

Thank you Eric Martin, that was a great, great post with so much in it to chew over that I'm bookmarking it for further study. My apologies for the double post.

aimai

[aimai]

Thank you Eric Martin, that was a great, great post with so much in it to chew over that I'm bookmarking it for further study. My apologies for the double post.

aimai

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

Eric,

As long as we are tossing out links to background info re: Moqtada al-Sadr, Nir Rosen caught my attention back in early 2006 with a lengthy and detailed account of Iraqi politics predominantly from the Sadrist viewpoint.

Sounds like I will need to add Patrick Cockburn to my ever growing reading list.

[Eric Martin]

TLTIA,

That was a great Rosen article. I've cited it more than once. That's how rich it is.

I also highly recommend Babak Rahimi:

http://www.usip.org/specialists/bios/archives/rahimi.html

and

http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2373328

(click on his name in the second link for a list of his Jamestown articles)

This ICG report was also very informative:

http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5286&l=1

[Gary Farber]

I could praise you at great length, Eric, but anyone who has been reading you for any length of time -- let alone those of us who have read and blogrolled American Footprints back through previous names -- knows how well you know your stuff, and we almost take for granted, sadly, your insight and breadth of knowledge and sense.

Alternatively, we could simply compare your posts to the posts of those with true insight, and say: Eric, you loser-defeatist slut.

[Eric Martin]

Eric, you loser-defeatist slut.

I am not a loser-defeatist!

[Gary Farber]

"Sounds like I will need to add Patrick Cockburn to my ever growing reading list."

Patrick Cockburn has been doing some of the best reporting from Iraq, on his many tours for The Independent since the war got under way. People who haven't been reading him since 2002 have to have less complete knowledge of Iraq than those who have regularly read him, unless they're Iraqis.

One can't link to the results, but go here and enter "patrick cockburn," and read as you like.

[Gary Farber]

Or start here.

[Gary Farber]

By the way, who remembers our little debate here on the Down's Syndrome bombers in Baghdad?

Sebastian? Comment?

I expect it will be that Cockburn is clearly in sympathy with AIF ("anti-Iraqi forces" and his reporting can't be trusted because of his slant; but I'm always thrilled to be pleasantly surprised.

[Jeff]

Reading this story from a few days ago, I was struck by, of all things, the parallels between Moqtada and Bush

There may be some differences but two major differences stand out: Sadr seems to be a good tactician, knowing when to pile on attacks, and when to level off, when to accept a cease-fire and when not to. Bush as a tactician? It is to laugh.

Also, Sadr seems to care about the populace of Sadr City. Who, besides himself and his cronies, does Bush care about?

[mikefromtexas]

Dr. Juan Cole has been writing about Sadr for quite some time. He's stated all along that Sadr has a large influence among the working/lower class Shiites. He's a nationalist of the truest sort and his alledged alliance with Iran is mostly propaganda.