By Erik Eckholm
New York Times
05 January 2005
With all the pluck and pleasure of a natural politician, he sprang from his car and glad-handed the gathering throng. He led the children in a raucous chant and then delivered a timeless political appeal.
"You need to elect someone from your own city, someone who understands your problems," the candidate shouted. "You need someone who suffered the way you did."
The candidate, Fatah al-Sheik, 37, is the leader of a newly formed slate that is competing in the national elections scheduled for Jan. 30. But what is unusual is that he and his running mates are all from the vast, impoverished Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad called Sadr City, and all are acolytes of Moktada al-Sadr, the young cleric whose stern visage glares down from nearly every wall.
Perhaps most surprising, however, was Mr. Sheik's ability to campaign at all on the mean streets of Baghdad; that, and his ticket's pledge of fealty to a cleric who is, officially at least, ignoring the elections.
With most of Baghdad plagued by car bombs and gunfire, few candidates are likely to be mingling with crowds in the coming weeks. Only a few months back, Sadr City in particular was the scene of raging combat between American troops and Mr. Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army.
But now, for local residents anyway, Sadr City may be one of the few places where press-the-flesh stumping is thinkable. Its ethnic insularity protects it from troublemaking strangers, and residents have largely heeded Mr. Sadr's call, as fighting ended in the fall, to halt attacks.
Still, the emergence of this openly pro-Sadr ticket led by Mr. Sheik, who is the editor of a newspaper called Sadr Rising and has close ties to the cleric, might seem puzzling on its face.
Mr. Sadr is not taking part in the elections, and at least one of his close aides has called for a boycott. But he clearly represents a significant constituency, mainly younger, disaffected Shiites, and people who have been watching the campaign here say he is hedging his bets.
He quietly approved the inclusion of about 20 supporters, insiders say, on the mainstream Shiite religious ticket, the United Iraqi Alliance, which has the implicit backing of the revered Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and is expected to be the major winner in the elections.
At the same time, Mr. Sadr has permitted this more open campaign by Mr. Sheik, who last fall served as a press officer to the Sadr militia as it battled American troops in Najaf and Sadr City.
Mr. Sadr, other politicians say, has cleverly left his aims ambiguous.
"Moktada is keeping his options open," said Ghassan al-Atiyah, a Shiite who returned from exile last year and leads a secular, ethnically mixed election slate. If the elections and resulting institutions take hold, Mr. Sadr will have sway from within; if his followers do poorly or things fall apart, he can say he was not involved.
Mr. Sheik is careful to emphasize that he is not officially representing Mr. Sadr - only that he and the other candidates on the ticket are all deep believers in the cleric and the ideals of his famous father, who was killed in 1999 while Saddam Hussein controlled the government.
Mr. Sheik's ticket, Independent National Leaders, is fielding 180 candidates for the national assembly and 42 for the Baghdad city council. Here in Sadr City, where a Shiite population of two million includes both militant devotees of Mr. Sadr and those who call him a reckless upstart, the slate faces a head-on contest with the nationally dominant United Iraqi Alliance.
On Thursday, in what amounted to an informal kickoff of his campaign, Mr. Sheik drove with a visitor to a typically rundown block, not yet touched by American promises of water, sewerage and electrical repair, where idle people chatted among smelly pools of sewage and sheep nosed through piles of rubbish.
As five discreetly armed bodyguards hovered, Mr. Sheik attracted a small crowd of the curious. As he spoke, he pushed some potent emotional buttons, emphasizing that he was a local, not a returned exile, and one who was here with the people when they were under attack last fall.
He was not bashful about playing the Moktada al-Sadr card. "If Moktada chooses someone, will you vote for him?" he asked, his expression one giant wink. On hearing the cleric's name, the knot of children erupted into an enthusiastic chant for Mr. Sadr while Mr. Sheik beamed.
"You need backpacks and new books and pens," he said to the children. "So will you make sure that your parents vote?"
The men on the street gave Mr. Sheik a friendly reception but were coy about declaring themselves.
Will people here take part in the election?
"God willing," replied Khazad Abid, a grizzled 55-year-old clan leader.
Who will the people be voting for?
"We haven't decided yet," he said with a nearly toothless grin.
Back in his headquarters in a small Internet cafe, Mr. Sheik expanded on his views, revealing the brooding resentments that Sadr followers feel toward Ayatollah Sistani and mainstream Shiite leaders, who spent the Hussein years in Iran.
"Nobody on our list was in exile, and we are not controlled by any political party," he said.
"During the Najaf troubles last fall, those people left Moktada all by himself," he said of the Shiite establishment. "The Mahdi Army was getting killed, and they stayed silent and watched. When American warplanes bombed Sadr City, those big parties did nothing, and the ayatollah's people did nothing."
Mr. Sheik showed a keen awareness of the Western news media and Western concerns, cutting short an anticipated question on the touchy issue of religion's role in government. "I want to make everyone relax about this," he said. "The nature of Iraq is not the nature of Iran. The Shiites of Iraq are not the Shiites of Iran."
But Mr. Sadr's followers do demand an Islamic constitution, he added, though one that is at the same time accepting of all Iraqi groups.
His ticket does not have as much money as the major campaigns. With electricity so scarce in Sadr City, that may not make a huge difference, and he has another weapon, he said.
"Our television is the Friday Prayer," he said. "This is better anyway. Governments can regulate what goes on television, but only God controls what is said in Friday Prayer."
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Citation: Erik Eckholm, "Ally of Militant Cleric Is on the Stump in Sadr City," New York Times, 5 January 2005.
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/05/international/middleeast/05sadr.html?hp=&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position
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