Cross-posted at Progressive Historians, My Left Wing and BlueSunbelt
Back on April 9, over a million Iraqis marched into Najaf chanting, "Yes, yes, Iraq. No, no, America!" and "No, no, American; leave, leave occupier!" The massive protest didn’t get much coverage in the U.S.; unless of course you consider the cable news network’s reporting of "... 10’s of thousands of protesters" in-depth journalism.
Before I go off on a digressive rant about the MSM let me get to my point.
The demonstrators -- for the most part measured and peaceful – had promptly responded to a call by the anti-U.S. Shi'ite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr on the fourth anniversary of the end of Ba’athist rule in Baghdad, to demand an end of the foreign occupation.
To this day, the Bush administration downplays the power of Sadr even though they know that anyone who can muster by proxy that type of response from supporters is a power to be reckoned with. But both the size of the demonstration and its sudden assemblage weren’t the only remarkable aspects of this power play.
The unprecedented composition of the masses who demonstrated should also raise the administration’s hackles.
Sadr’s message is also reaching the ears of Sunnis.
This from Asia Times Online:
The presence of many senior Sunni clerics at the head of the march, which started from Muqtada's mosque in Kufa, a nearby town, and the absence of any sectarian flags or images in the parade, underlined the ecumenical nature of the protest.
Crucially, the mammoth demonstration reflected the view prevalent among Iraqi lawmakers. Last autumn, 170 of them in a 275-member Parliament, signed a motion demanding to know the date of an American withdrawal. The discomfited government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki played a procedural trick by referring the subject to a parliamentary committee, thereby buying time.
Saved by the old procedural trick? Just how many more tricks does Maliki have to play? More importantly, when will Muqtada al-Sadr tire of the game.
Sadr’s only in his mid-thirties. He’s considered a hojjatoleslam, an honorific title one rank below an ayatollah in the Shiite religious hierarchy. It’s a remarkable achievement for someone of Sadr’s age, and it’s augmented by a political strategy unmatched by any other Iraqi politician – except one, 73-year old, grand ayatollah Ali-Sistani, whose decree must be followed by all those below him, including al-Sadr.
A bit of Sadr’s history from the article:
Muqtada's father, grand ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and two elder brothers were assassinated outside a mosque in Najaf in February 1999 by the henchmen of president Saddam Hussein. The grand ayatollah had defied Saddam by issuing a religious decree calling on Shi'ites to attend Friday prayers in mosques. The Iraqi dictator, paranoid about large Shi'ite gatherings, feared these would suddenly turn violently anti-regime.
Muqtada then went underground - just as he did recently in the face of the Bush administration's "surge" plan - resurfacing only after the Ba'athist regime fell in April 2003; and Saddam City, the vast slum of Baghdad, with nearly 2 million Shi'ite residents, was renamed Sadr City. As the surviving son of the martyred family of a grand ayatollah, Muqtada was lauded by most Shi'ites.
While welcoming the demise of the Ba'athist regime, Muqtada consistently opposed the continuing occupation of his country by Anglo-American forces. When L Paul Bremer, the American viceroy in Iraq, banned his magazine al-Hawza al Natiqa ("The Vocal Seminary") in April 2004 and American soldiers fired on his followers protesting peacefully against the publication's closure, Muqtada called for "armed resistance" to the occupiers.
In response to his clarion call, uprisings spread from Sadr City to the southern Iraqi holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, and more than 500 civilians died in subsequent battles. Paul Bremer lifted the ban on Sadr’s magazine and rescinded his order to arrest him.
In a shrewd political maneuver, Sadr acquiesced to the wishes of Sistani to see all Shi'ite groups come together to contest the parliamentary elections in Baghdad. Sadr’s growing faction became allies with two of the other Shi'ite religious parties – the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Da’wa al-Islamiya (the Islamic call) – to form the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA).
Sadr’s Mahdi Army suddenly had political cover in the face of U.S. military aggression. Up until the alliance was formed, the Bush administration considered Sadr and his militia as their greatest threat to American oil interests, and long sought a way to marginalize the young cleric’s influence. This proved more difficult than first thought. After all, through legitimate elections, Sadr’s followers occupied 6 out of 38 minister positions in Maliki’s government. On orders from Sadr, all six have subsequently left their posts in the cabinet due to Maliki’s refusal to demand a timetable for American troop withdrawal. The protest maneuver dealt a blow to Maliki’s already shaky government. Consequently, despite Bush administration rhetoric to the contrary, Maliki’s hold on power in Baghdad now seems tenuous at best.
One must consider whether Sadr’s the only person in Iraq with a plan – and, it’s actually working.
I can’t help but wonder whether the Bush administration even foresaw Sadr’s next chess move when they introduced the "surge" back on Feb. 13. Did they think he’d stand up his army to fight U.S. and Iraqi forces inside Baghdad? Were they that naïve? Or, was the increase in troops just a furtive scheme to eliminate Sunni extremists only? Whatever the plan, one thing’s for sure, the U.S. troops dieing right now in Baghdad haven’t been fighting with the Mahdi Army. Sadr’s followers wisely vanished into the shadows. If they’d stayed to join the battle, our losses probably would have doubled by now.
Sadr’s decision to avoid a fight and retreat to the shadows was an ingenuous one. He not only garnered approval from Iraqi politicians, but also gained favor from Sistani, who denounces violence while quietly but staunchly opposed to the U.S. led occupation.
More from the article:
In a message to the nation on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the demise of Saddam's Ba'athist regime, Muqtada coupled his order to the Mahdi fighters to intensify their campaign to expel the Anglo-American troops with a call to the Iraqi security forces to join the struggle to defeat "the arch enemy - America". He urged them to cease targeting Iraqis and direct their anger at the occupiers.
It was the Mahdi Army - controlling the shrine of Imam Ali, the founder of Shi'ite Islam, in the holy city of Najaf - that battled the American troops to a standstill in August 2004. The impasse lasted a fortnight, during which large parts of Najaf's old city were reduced to rubble, with the government of the US-appointed prime minister Iyad Allawi, favorite Iraqi exile of the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. State Department as well as leader of the exiled Iraqi National Accord, failing to defuse it.
By contrast, it took Sistani, freshly back in Najaf, his home base, from London after eye surgery a single session with Muqtada over dinner to resolve the crisis. A compromise emerged. The Mahdi Army ceded control of the holy shrine not to the Americans or their Iraqi cohorts but to Sistani's representatives, and both Mahdi militiamen and US troops left the city.
There’s no doubt that the Sadr-Sistani tag-team continues to be Bush’s source of vexation. Without them, Maliki’s administration continues its downward spiral. And, with them in the picture, the U.S. will never attain complete control of security in Baghdad or other parts of Iraq. To make things even more difficult, U.S. and Iraqi forces cannot pressure Sistani. They can harass Sadr on occasion when he pokes his head out of the shadows -- although to what extent is not yet clear -- the ayatollah established his nationalism early on as U.S. forces neared Najaf back on March 25, 2003. Sistani issued a religious decree dictating all Muslims to resist the invaders; then -- to the Bush administration’s surprise – adamantly refused to meet coalition officials. He continues to do so today.
Back to the article:
Sistani's next blow fell on the Bush administration earlier this month. He let be known his disapproval of Washington-backed legislation to allow thousands of former Ba'ath Party members to resume their public service positions. That undermined one of the White House's pet projects in Iraq - an attempt to entice into the political mainstream part of the alienated Sunni minority that is at the heart of the Iraqi insurgency.
In sum, while refraining from participating in everyday politics, Sistani intervenes on the issues of paramount importance to the Iraqi people, as he sees them. Western journalists, who routinely describe him as belonging to the "quietist school" of Shi'ite Islam (at odds with the "interventionist school"), are therefore off the mark.
Given Sistani's uncompromising opposition to the presence of foreign troops in Iraq, his staunch nationalism and the unmatched reverence that he evokes, particularly among the majority Shi'ites, he poses a greater long-term threat to Washington's interests in Iraq than Muqtada. However, far from belonging to opposite schools of Shi'ite Islam, Muqtada and Sistani, both staunch nationalists, complement each other - much to the puzzled frustration of the White House.
There can be no doubt that Sistani’s passive but stubborn resistance to the occupiers is an unmitigated pain in the Bush administration’s derriere -- as is Sadr’s demonstrable ability to rally the throngs, and his increasing appeal to a broad section of the Sunni community. Together, they scare the heck out of the Bush administration. They are more formidable than both the Sunni extremists and al-Qaeda in Iraq together.
We’ve already lost 3,334 American sons & daughters in homage to profits for Exxon-Mobil. We need to get the hell out of Iraq before Bush’s nightmare comes to pass.
Let Blackwater U.S.A. do the surgin’.
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