America's unlikely savior

Recently, the U.S. was calling for Muqtada al-Sadr's head. Now, the fiery cleric may be the only man who can defuse Iraq's Sunni-Shiite conflict.

By Nir Rosen

Read more: Politics, America, Saddam Hussein, News, Iraq, Civil War, Muqtada al-Sadr

AP photo

Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, left, shakes hands with Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, last month.

Feb. 3, 2006 | ISTANBUL, Turkey -- In the spring and summer of 2004, the radical young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr led an armed uprising against the U.S. occupiers. His militia, the Mahdi army, fought several bloody battles against American forces. Muqtada's intifada, along with the Sunni insurgency that broke out in Fallujah at the same time, spelled doom for the neocon fantasy that the U.S. occupation would be a cakewalk. High-ranking U.S. officials called for Muqtada to be captured or killed. But the fiery cleric not only survived, but flourished -- and in the last two years he has turned his enormous street credibility into political power. In the December elections his slate earned potentially 30 seats in Parliament, making him an equal partner with two other Shiite groups in the largest Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance.

But what sets Muqtada apart from the other Shiite leaders -- and makes him a potentially crucial, if supremely unlikely, ally for the United States -- is his close ties to the Sunni insurgents. With sectarian tensions in Iraq and the region increasing, Muqtada may be the only Shiite leader in Iraq who can reach out to Sunnis, who see him as "the good Shia." His Mahdi army fought the American occupiers, establishing street cred with the Sunni resistance. Much of Muqtada's appeal is his fervent nationalism. Unlike the leadership of Dawa or the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Muqtada was not in exile and, like his father, has condemned foreign-born clerics based in Iraq.

On the crucial issues that divide Shiite and Sunni, Muqtada sides with the Sunnis. He opposes federalism, which he believes will lead to the breakup of Iraq, and supports amending the constitution. SCIRI and the other main Shiite party, Dawa, support federalism and refuse to amend the constitution. For Sunnis, federalism means the loss not just of the old Iraq, which they dominated, but also of oil revenue, and they are determined to resist it. Muqtada is their only Shiite ally. Inexperienced in foreign affairs and barely experienced in politics, Muqtada may nonetheless be the only figure capable of halting Iraq's steady descent into a civil war that could ignite the entire region.

Juan Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan who is an expert on Iraq's Shiites, says, "Muqtada is indeed now in a position to form a link between fundamentalist Sunnis and hard line Shias, to the extent that they do have some goals in common. [American ambassador to Iraq Zalmay] Khalilzad is now supporting a better deal for the Sunni Arabs and is pushing for a national unity government into which the Shias incorporate them, so he is a de facto potential ally of Muqtada, though neither he nor Muqtada will admit it."

Muqtada is an unlikely ally for the United States. Before joining the Shiite coalition, Muqtada insisted that other Iraqi politicians agree to his "Code of Honor," which sets a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, legitimizes resistance if the U.S. stays, and rejects any relationship with Israel. Muqtada also refused to work with more secular former Baathist parties, calling the participation of U.S. favorite Ayad Allawi in particular a red line that would force him to back out. Allawi and his party were hated by Muqtada's men both for having former Baathists in their ranks and for Allawi's asking the Americans to battle Muqtada in the spring and summer of 2004.

In recent weeks, Muqtada burnished his credentials with both the Sunni and Shiite establishments when he visited first Saudi Arabia, then Iran -- where he warned the United States that if it attacked Iran, he would send his forces into the field. His meeting with Saudi Arabia's King Abullah proved he is the only Shiite leader in Iraq that Sunnis can tolerate; his trip to Iran cemented his ties with the Shiite clerical elite and boosted his regional stature as an ideological foe of the United States and Israel.

Muqtada's legislative triumph makes him legitimate, no longer an outsider. Crucially, his presence gives Sunnis hope that he will succeed in defying SCIRI by blocking federalism and modifying the constitution. It also complicates SCIRI's coalition with the Kurds. The hypernationalist Muqtada and his followers are fierce enemies of the Kurds, condemning their autonomy and clashing with them in the north, where many Shiite Turkmens are aligned with Muqtada.

Muqtada is far from impressive in person. His unpolished speech and youth (it has been widely speculated that he is younger than his putative age of about 32) have led American officials to consistently underestimate him. But Muqtada has drawn on his impeccable family pedigree and his fiery anti-Americanism to build vast popular support -- and he has proved much more clever than his enemies expected.

I first met Muqtada in May 2003 in his barani, or office, in a Najaf alley, across a shop where his and his father's sermons were sold on CD and one could buy watches with the Sadr family members depicted on the face. Unlike other clerics in Najaf, who speak classical Arabic, Muqtada speaks in a strong colloquial slang. He seemed cocky. He disparaged Shiite exile leaders who had been based in Iran and had not suffered with the Iraqis, singling out the SCIRI for particular disdain. Muqtada expressed only contempt for the Americans who had so recently rid his people of Saddam, and resentment of Iran, which had done nothing to help Iraq's Shiites. "I am not afraid," he said, "I wish to be a martyr and I don't fear death." I was struck by how awkward Muqtada looked and how ill-experienced he was for a man so popular that throughout Shiite neighborhoods he was known only by his first name, a tribute no other Iraqi leader received. I wondered, as I do to this day, if there was some other brain behind his operation. His young, unctuous associates seemed too smug, as if they already knew Iraq was theirs.

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