Muqtada al-Sadr and Iraq's Latest Civil War
Dazing and Confusing: Never known as the brightest star in Iraq's firmament of leaders, Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite-Islamist leader of the Mahdi Army, has nevertheless shown himself to be an indomitable and unpredictable force since 2003. He wants political power. He thrives on conflict. He cannot survive without the backing of his violent Mahdi militia. But the militia appears nowhere near defeat no matter what the Iraqi government and Anglo-American forces throw at it in Baghdad, Basra and other Iraqi cities. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Stalemate and More Than 300 Dead
Some 28,000 Iraqi troops and policemen, backed by American and British tanks and warplanes, have been trying either to dislodge or eradicate Shiite Islamist leader Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army from Basra, Iraq's second-biggest city and a hub of Shiite power in the southern part of the city.
But if the British army, which occupied Basra until its contingents retreated to suburban barracks last year, neither could dislodge the Mahdi Army nor keep it from holding sway over most of Basra even when the city was nominally under British control, what makes the Iraqi government and its American sponsors think they can so easily take out the Sadrists -- in Basra or elsewhere?
Bush and Maliki vs. Sadr
As of Sunday, with fighting spreading to Baghdad's Shiite-dominated Sadr City and elsewhere, more than 300 people had been killed, more than a third of them in Baghdad, another third in Basra. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who launched the offensive on Monday and set himself up in Basra to personally oversee the battle, has vowed not to stop the offensive until he's eliminated the Mahdi Army. President Bush who, with a particularly cold-hearted choice of words, described the blood-letting as "a very positive moment in the development of a sovereign nation," is also staking what capital he has left in the supposed successes of his troop escalation on the outcome of the war on Mahdi. Bush and Maliki may well be playing into Muqtada al-Sadr's hands.
The Skinny on Sadr
Who is this cleric? Temperamentally unpredictable and chronically inconsistent, his leadership styles alternates between hot-headed defiance, conciliation, confusion and sheer absence from the Iraqi scene. He’s believed to shuttle frequently between Iraq and Iran, from whose theocratic leaders he seeks protection, weaponry and spiritual if not political guidance.
What he's up to now in Basra and Baghdad is unclear. One moment the militiamen are distributing Korans olive branches and social services, the next they're bombarding the Green Zone, where coalition forces are fortressed in the heart of Baghdad, beheading Sunnis and threatening country-wide conflagration until the American occupation is over.
That's pretty much what Sadr said on Al-Jazeera on Saturday -- one day before ordering his fighters to stand down. Not in surrender, to be sure, but in exchange for government guarantees that they won't be chased. Which is to say that Sadr, having made his point that his Mahdi forces can still resist obliteration (and that his power is still to be reckoned with), wants a return to the status quo. That's not what either Maliki or American generals want.
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