[Media-watch] What does Muqtada al-Sadr Want?

Thu Aug 19 23:41:02 BST 2004

What does Muqtada al-Sadr Want?

The Associated Press expresses confusion, both its own, and that of US
government officials, about what Muqtada al-Sadr's goals are.
by: Juan Cole on: 19th Aug, 04

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.

There were several loud explosions Thursday morning near the Shrine of Ali
where Muqtada is holed up with about 1000 men.

Although Muqtada agreed Wednesday to disarm his militia and leave the shrine
if US troops would withdraw from the city first, few expect this siege to
end well or easily. The wire services do not appear to have caught on that
Muqtada is demanding the withdrawal of US troops as a necessary
precondition, but that is what is being reported by al-Jazeerah.

Interim Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan threatened to teach Muqtada a lesson
he would never forget, and promised decisive action against him, if he did
not leave the shrine within hours. (-al-Zaman ). (Shaalan has adopted the
body language and rhetoric of the old Baath regime, which makes the skin of
a lot of Iraqis crawl. To be fair, Muqtada also acts in a thuggish way that
alarms many Iraqis who have had enough of thugs.)
http://www.globalecho.org/view_article.php?aid=1236

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