Muqtada al-Sadr

[Ned]

The very definition of a "leader" is to have a position that is consistent with the views of audience he is currently addressing...

Opps.

This cannot be right.

[Patroklos]

I a curious what the actually Iraqis think about Sadr's choice of compounds. They can resent America all they want, they will no matter what we do the ungreatfull bastards.

But they can't be very supportive if him actively running a war from their most holy sights. And not command and control, but storing weapons and shooting from them. I bet most more than understand who is responsible for the damages to those sites, and just hate America "because."

[Harry Tuttle]

Well, looks like the hammer is about to come down on this champ. Goooood riddance to bad rubbish.

[The diplomat]

Looks like Sadr's days are numbered. The battle of Najaf has begun:

[img]C:\Documents and Settings\hoffmann\My Documents\14_2_081904_najaf5.jpg[/img]

[Harry Tuttle]

Red X, Red X!

[Ned]

And, the Iranians, Sadr's paymasters, have just issued a threat to attack our forces in Iraq.

[Harry Tuttle]

Ned, are you referring to this article?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,129390,00.html

[Ramo]

1. Saying that Sadr is somehow a puppet of the Iranians is a completely ignorant charicature. He's too much of a loose canon and a nationalist (indeed, one reason why Sadrists don't like Sistani is that he's ethnically Iranian) to have any real support from them. SCIRI and Dawa are far, far closer to the Iranians.

2. If we attack, the Sadrists will be in permanent insurgency mode for the forseeable future. This is a movement that has lasted 20 years under the repression of Saddam, that's survived the assassination of its leader (Sadr the elder), and will survive the death of another leader. They're milleniarist fanatics who expect the Mahdi to come down soon and smack us down. Further, their ranks consists of poor slum dwellers who recently arrived from the country side, with plenty of tribal connections; so kill them, and their brothers, uncles, and cousins are gonna come after you. And destroying the Imam Ali Shrine in the process is hardly helpful either.

[Ned]

Ramo, the Iranians are playing the same role here their ancesters the Persians once played in financing the Spartans during the Peloponnesian War.

Ditto 117 AD. When Trajan conquered Mesopotamia, the "Iranians" financed a Jewish revolt in North Africa that forced a Roman withdrawal to deal with it.

[Agathon]

What does this man want? Does he want to be the Great Leader of Iraq?

From juancole.com

Tom Engelhardt asks hard questions at the indispensable Tomdispatch.com about journalistic language concerning the Iraq crisis. How do we characterize Muqtada al-Sadr? Our military operations in the country? What words to journalists use and how does that affect perceptions?

Meanwhile, the Associated Press expresses confusion, both its own, and that of US government officials, about what Muqtada al-Sadr's goals are.

I don't understand this confusion. Muqtada has given many sermons and interviews in the past 16 months outlining his goals exactly.

1) He wants the US troops out of the country immediately, which is to say, an end to Occuption. If there have to be foreign troops in Iraq, he wants them under a United Nations command.

2) He refuses to cooperate (he would say "collaborate") with the caretaker government of Iyad Allawi, which he sees as a puppet regime installed by the United States. He insists that no legitimate Iraqi governmental process can begin until the US is out.

3) He wants the reestablishment of a strong central Iraqi government with a strong military, but which has cut all ties with the Baathist past.

4) He wants Iraq to stay together rather than being partitioned, and has denounced Kurdish demands for loose federalism.

5) He wants Iraqi Shiism to emerge from Iran's shadow and to establish its independence from Iran. His movement is rooted in the Shiite ghettos of Iraq and is very indigenous. He is not Iran's catspaw in Iraq, quite the opposite. He is strong Iraqi nationalist.

6) He sometimes talks about "democracy" in post-American Iraq, but probably just means populism. Like Peron and Franco, his populism implies his ability to maintain and direct his own militia, who provide "order" (read puritanical morality imposed by force) to Shiite neighborhoods.

7) In the long term, he would like to see a system in Iraq similar to the regime in Iran. He wants Islamic law to be the law of the land, and he wants clerics to rule. His father studied with Ayatollah Khomeini and accepted the notion of clerical rule. So does Muqtada. That is, there may be a place for elections (as in Iran), but true power would rest in the hands of the clerics. He has admitted all this in Arabic press interviews.

So, I don't understand the widespread puzzlement reported by AP. It may not be a simple set of positions, but they aren't hidden from view or hard to understand.

[lord of the mark]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Ramo

1. Saying that Sadr is somehow a puppet of the Iranians is a completely ignorant charicature. He's too much of a loose canon and a nationalist (indeed, one reason why Sadrists don't like Sistani is that he's ethnically Iranian) to have any real support from them. SCIRI and Dawa are far, far closer to the Iranians.

Reports ive seen say that SCIRI and Dawa get their support from the Khatami govt, while Sadr gets his from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and others close Khamenei. As for attacking Sistani for being Iranian, that does not at all show Sadr isnt getting help from the Iranians. as Karl Lueger, Mayor of Vienna once said about his partys antisemitism and his acceptance of help from wealthy Jews drawn by his opposition to socialism "That (antisemitism) is for the gutter - I decide WHO is a Jew"

2. If we attack, the Sadrists will be in permanent insurgency mode for the forseeable future. This is a movement that has lasted 20 years under the repression of Saddam, that's survived the assassination of its leader (Sadr the elder), and will survive the death of another leader.

It may well survive in some form. But should Sadr get away with the assasinations of other Shia leaders, and the taking over of key cities, it will be a worse form.

They're milleniarist fanatics who expect the Mahdi to come down soon and smack us down.

And losing would seem proof that hes NOT the mahdi.

Further, their ranks consists of poor slum dwellers who recently arrived from the country side, with plenty of tribal connections; so kill them, and their brothers, uncles, and cousins are gonna come after you.

Or they decide that its not worth dying, and give up. Especially if the cousin whos killed is known to the family as a criminal, as apparently many mahdi army members are.

Look, in April we killed thousands of Mahdi army members. Where are the thousands of new recruits?

And destroying the Imam Ali Shrine in the process is hardly helpful either.

which is why we wont destroy it.

[Ned]

Agathon, I agree with the summary. The Iranians clearly want a repeat of particularly 117 where their money financed the Jewish resistance and forced the Romans away from their borders.

[Last Conformist]

Not so much from their borders as from the heartlands of their empire - Ctesiphon was the chief capital of the Arsacids.

[lord of the mark]

AFP :


'All the roads leading to the Old City are blocked off by tanks or Humvees. Residents who walk in the streets where the electric power cables swing loose, raise their hands in the air as they approach the American troops.

Are the locals friendly? "It seems," says SFC Compton, who has joined his colleagues in an abandoned house where they are resting up and where they stock provisions. "They seem nice but really I don't know," he adds cautiously.

But he is wrong. The few residents who have stayed apparently want just one thing: to see the Americans finish off Sadr's militia as quickly as possible.

"The Americans are good with us," says 27-year-old Hassan Mohammad Ibrahim, who has been left alone in his home. "The militia, when they occupied the street, made us suffer. I want them out of here alive or dead."

"They ruined us," said Karim Hussein, a 38-year-old mason, who has dropped by his home to pick up a few possessions before leaving again. "It's time they were done with. Let the Americans attack and have done with them once and for all." '

[Az]

Agathon, I agree with the summary. The Iranians clearly want a repeat of particularly 117 where their money financed the Jewish resistance and forced the Romans away from their borders.


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