By Edward Wong
The New York Times, 27 November 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 26 - Men loyal to Moktada al-Sadr piled out of their cars at a plantation near Baghdad on a recent morning, bristling with Kalashnikov rifles and eager to exact vengeance on the Sunni Arab fighters who had butchered one of their Shiite militia brothers.
When the smoke cleared after the fight, at least 21 bodies lay scattered among the weeds, making it the deadliest militia battle in months. The black-clad Shiites swaggered away, boasting about the carnage.
Even as that battle raged on Oct. 27, Mr. Sadr's aides in Baghdad were quietly closing a deal that would signal his official debut as a kingmaker in Iraqi politics, placing his handpicked candidates on the same slate - and on equal footing - with the Shiite governing parties in the December parliamentary elections. The country's rulers had come courting him, and he had forced them to meet his terms.
Wielding violence and political popularity as tools of his authority, Mr. Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has defied the American authorities here since the fall of Saddam Hussein, is cementing his role as one of Iraq's most powerful figures.
Just a year after Mr. Sadr led two fierce uprisings, the Americans are hailing his entry into the elections as the best sign yet that the political process can co-opt insurgents.
But his ascent could portend a darker chain of events, for he continues to embrace his image as an unrepentant guerrilla leader even as he takes the reins of political power.
Mr. Sadr has made no move to disband his militia, the thousands-strong Mahdi Army. In recent weeks, factions of the militia have brazenly assaulted and abducted Sunni Arabs, rival Shiite groups, journalists and British-led forces in the south, where Mr. Sadr has a zealous following. At least 19 foreign soldiers and security contractors have been killed there since late summer, mostly by roadside bombs planted by Shiite militiamen who use Iranian technology, British officers say. The latest killing took place Nov. 20 near Basra.
"The fatality rate is quite high, much higher than it was a year ago," Maj. Gen. J. B. Dutton, the British commander in southern Iraq, said in a briefing to reporters.
Members of the Mahdi Army have also joined the police in large numbers, while retaining their loyalty to Mr. Sadr. Squad cars in Baghdad and southern cities cruise openly with pictures of Mr. Sadr taped to the windows. On Nov. 17, the American Embassy demanded that the Iraqi government prohibit private armies from controlling the Iraqi security forces, after American soldiers had found 169 malnourished prisoners, some of them tortured, in a Baghdad police prison reportedly under the command of a Shiite militia.
Mr. Sadr's oratory is as anti-American and incendiary as it has ever been. A recent article in Al Hawza, a weekly Sadr publication that the Americans tried unsuccessfully to close last year, carried the headline: "Bush Family: Your Nights Will Be Finished." Another article explained that Mr. Sadr was supporting the December elections to rid Iraq of American-backed politicians who "rip off the heads of the underprivileged and scatter the pieces of their children and elderly."
Partly because of his uncompromising attitude, Mr. Sadr, who is in his early 30's, is immensely popular among impoverished Shiites. That has made him the most coveted ally of the governing Shiite parties as they head into the December elections. Mr. Sadr used this leverage to get 30 of his candidates on the Shiite coalition's slate, as many as the number allotted to each of the two main governing parties, the Dawa Islamic Party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Mr. Sadr's aides have already negotiated with those parties for executive offices and ministry posts in the next government. Bahaa al-Aaraji, an influential Sadr loyalist who was secretary of the constitutional committee, said in an interview that Mr. Sadr had urged him to take an executive office after the elections.
Early this month, the leader of the Supreme Council, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, went to the holy city of Najaf to visit Mr. Sadr in a gesture of solidarity. Mr. Hakim and Mr. Sadr are sons of deceased ayatollahs whose families have feuded. In August, the Mahdi Army stormed the offices of the Supreme Council across southern Iraq. Mr. Hakim's recent visit showed how much the mainstream Shiite leaders needed the support of Mr. Sadr, no matter how much they abhorred him.
"They are the largest group in the Shiite community," said Hajim al-Hassani, a secular Sunni Turkmen who is speaker of the transitional National Assembly. "They will be a force to deal with in the elections. If they run separately, they would get most of the seats in the south."
Mr. Sadr is also trying to use the elections to elevate his stature as a spiritual leader. Though his political group has joined the Shiite coalition, he has yet to endorse anyone. That is apparently because he wants to emulate the top ayatollahs in Iraq, collectively known as the marjaiyah, who usually stay above day-to-day politics. The most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has said he will not back any single group in the elections.
"Moktada doesn't support any list," said Sheik Abbas al-Rubaie, Mr. Sadr's senior political aide. "He has coordinated his opinion with that of the marjaiyah. They say they support everyone, but not any specific list."
Mr. Sadr's support for the elections, though, is a marked change from last January, when he criticized the political process as a tool of the occupiers. Followers of Mr. Sadr at the time ran for transitional assembly seats, but not as official candidates of the Sadr movement. They won about two dozen seats and later got control of three ministries.
A Western diplomat said the Sadrists exhibited political acumen once in power. They recently sponsored an assembly bill demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops. The bill did not pass, but its development "showed an evolving political maturity," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid the appearance of foreign interference in Iraqi politics.
But greater Sadrist participation in governance has done little to curb the activities of the Mahdi Army. Iraqi and British officials have suggested that Mr. Sadr's militia is tied to hundreds of policemen in Basra who form a shadowy force called the Jameat, a group involved in killings and torture. General Dutton, the British commander, said Shiite-on-Shiite violence was continuing. In addition, sophisticated material from Iran for making bombs is going to "breakaway" militiamen, he said.
It is unclear how much command Mr. Sadr and his top aides have over some factions of the militia.
"I think the Sadrists are a social movement, not really so much an organization," said Juan Cole, a specialist on Shiite Islam at the University of Michigan. "So you have these neighborhood-based youth gangs masquerading as an 'army.' Then you have the mosque preachers loyal to Moktada who try to swing their congregations, and who interface with the youth gangs."
On Nov. 12, after a car bomb killed 8 people and wounded at least 40 others in a Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, dozens of gun-wielding Sadr loyalists sealed off the area, only occasionally admitting Iraqi policemen. A militiaman pulled up in a bulldozer to clear the debris. Others detained a man whom they accused of helping in the attack. They told a reporter they had gotten a confession out of him, and then they shoved him into a sedan and drove away.
Last month, militiamen near the Sadr City neighborhood in Baghdad abducted Rory Carroll, an Irish reporter for The Guardian. Senior Shiite officials said in interviews that the militiamen, acting without Mr. Sadr's approval, wanted to trade Mr. Carroll for a Mahdi Army commander imprisoned by the British in Basra. The kidnappers eventually released Mr. Carroll because of political pressure. Sheik Rubaie, Mr. Sadr's political aide, later said the Mahdi Army had nothing to do with the abduction.
Sadr officials are quite open, though, about the Mahdi Army's role in the deadly battle on Oct. 27, when the militiamen assaulted a Sunni Arab kidnapping ring in the farming area called Nahrawan, east of Baghdad. The Sunnis had abducted and mutilated a Sadrist and left his body parts strewn atop a car in a thicket of trees. When the Mahdi Army went to retrieve the body, the Sunnis opened fire with mortars, said Sheik Ghazi Naji Gannas, a local Shiite leader.
The militia retreated, then returned the next day with policemen for a final showdown. Sadr officials say the incident shows that the Mahdi Army can play a positive role in helping to secure Iraq. "We coordinated with the government, and we acted with their acknowledgment," Sheik Rubaie said.
But Sheik Gannas said the Mahdi Army was also carrying out abductions in the area. The militia was as unruly and dangerous as the Sunni extremists, he added, and nothing but trouble lay ahead if the Iraqi government failed to rein it in.
"Thank God," he said, "for this battle between the two sides."
Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi and Joao Silva contributed reporting for this article.
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Citation: Edward Wong. "Shiite Cleric Wields Violence and Popularity to Increase Power in Iraq," The New York Times, 27 November 2005
Original URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/international/middleeast/27sadr.html?pagewanted=all
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