IRAQ
Sadr's Surge
For the past several weeks, U.S. and Iraqi forces have been battling the Jaysh al-Mehdi, the militia of Shi'a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Supported by U.S. airstrikes, U.S. and Iraqi troops have steadily moved into Sadrist neighborhoods in Basra and the Sadrist stronghold of Sadr City in northeast Baghdad. The fighting has resulted in heavy casualties. Voices of Iraq reported Sadrist Member of Parliament Falah Shenshel's claim that "at least 400 civilians were killed and 1,720 others, including women and children, were wounded in the armed confrontations and bombarding operations that took place in Sadr city over the last three weeks." According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the weeks of fighting in the Shi'ite neighborhood "have destroyed the main market and isolated civilians from supplies of food and water," and several hospitals in Sadr City "have run out of basic medical supplies, including anesthesia and dressings." Despite President Bush hailing Iraqi efforts at the onset of hostilities in mid-March, subsequent accounts reveal that the Iraq army has performed poorly, requiring U.S. forces to play a much bigger role in the fighting than they had intended. The BBC reported that it was "clear that although the initial military planning was Iraqi, U.S. and British forces [were] deeply involved." Sadr is now giving indications that he may set aside his political ambitions and restart "a full-scale fight against U.S.-led forces."
POLITICS BY OTHER MEANS: Though Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Bush administration have characterized the current offensive as a crackdown on "criminals," many observers believe that it is an attempt by Maliki and his political allies to do by force what they can not do through elections: weaken the Sadr movement in advance of provincial elections in November, when the Sadrists are widely expected to make gains in Baghdad and in Iraq's Shi'a south. According to security expert Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Maliki's offensive "is more of a power struggle with Sadr than an effort to deal with security, 'militias,' and 'criminals.' Mohammed Bazzi of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in the Washington Times, "in singling out the Sadrists" and ignoring the existence of other militias, "Maliki is not trying to restore order. ... He wants to eliminate a political rival. " Though Maliki initially came to power with Sadr's support (after Maliki's predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jafari, was pushed out due to American pressure), Sadrists have become frustrated with Maliki because of what they see as his acquiescence to the U.S. occupation, evidenced by his unwillingness to demand a timetable for U.S. withdrawal. Maliki has since allied with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), the chief rival of the Sadr movement. Many of the U.S.-backed Iraqi army units doing battle with Sadrist forces "are pulled largely from the Badr Brigade," ISCI's militia wing. Both ISCI and the Badr were founded in Iran with the support of Ayatollah Khomeini, and Iran continues to support both groups.
AN EXPRESSION OF SHI'A GRIEVANCE: Iraq expert Reidar Visser of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs stated, "The Sadrists represent a strong popular movement with deep roots in Iraqi society, and it is entirely unrealistic to deal with them through military solutions alone." Reporter Patrick Cockburn notes that a good portion of Moqtada's support come from "young Shia who have been brought up with nothing" during the Saddam Hussein era and "who are pretty anarchic, pretty dangerous," and willing to fight and die for the cause. The Sadr movement dervies its populist message from the preachings of Moqtada's father, Grand Ayatollah Sadeq al-Sadr, who advocated a form of religious activism in which clerics take an active role in establishing a society based upon strict Islamic principles. The elder Sadr was assassinated by Saddam in 1999. Currently, in many of the poorest Shi'ite neighborhoods, Moqtada's offices provide a range of much-needed humanitarian services."A recent report from the Washington-based Refugees International said the Sadrist movement "has established itself as the main service provider in the country." Moqtada formed the JAM militia in the lawless aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion, to protect Shi'a neighborhoods as well as to help him secure his political base against the Iranian-trained and supported Badr Brigade militia. In the sectarian civil war which followed the February 2006 bombing of the al-Askariya mosque in Samarra, JAM elements engaged in sectarian cleansing of Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad and were responsible for numerous atrocities.
DENYING A LEGITIMATE POLITICAL TREND: The current violence represents the culmination of years of denial by United States authorities of Moqtada's position in the Iraq political scene. Since the beginning of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the United States has consistently refused to acknowledge Sadr's movement as a legitimate expression of Iraqi Shi'a populism. Former exile Ali Allawi recalled Coalition Provisional Authority chief Paul Bremer's reaction to the suggestion that Sadr represented a legitimate political tendency: Bremer retorted that he "didn't care a damn about the underclass and what they [the Sadrists] represented!" As Patrick Cockburn writes in his new book on Sadr, "One of the grossest of U.S. errors in Iraq was to try to marginalize [al-Sadr] and his movement. ... In any real accommodation between Shia and Sunni, the Sadrists must play a central part." Cordesman agrees that the Sadrists "will be a major political force in any future elections regardless of whether Sadr survives, Sadrists are allowed to run, or the elections are fair or partly rigged. ... Iraq's poorer and more religious Shi'ites will not disappear no matter how good the military gains are against the JAM."
