Exiled Iraqi sheikh may hold key to power in Iraq
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Exiled Iraqi sheikh may hold key to power in Iraq
Shilo Tue Mar 30, 2010 6:57 am
March 29, 2010 · Posted in NEWS
Exiled Iraqi sheikh may hold key to power in Iraq
Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintains an overlord’s hold over more than two million Shia Iraqis
The first in what could be the most crucial series of discussions to form Iraq’s new government took place early last week outside the country’s borders in the Iranian Shia shrine city of Qom.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor was a familiar firebrand in a black turban, Moqtada al-Sadr. Across from him was a delegation from the office of Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. They had come to seek a detente – and more importantly to find a way, any way, that the exiled cleric, who maintains an overlord’s hold over more than two million Shia Iraqis, would support Maliki being returned to office.
It was a triumphant moment for Sadr, who had been hounded out of town in 2007 by Maliki and the US army and marginalised as a spent force by American officials and most of the prime minister’s inner sanctum. Now, here he was being courted by his persecutors. In the two weeks since the 7 March general election, with the ballots steadily falling Ayad Allawi’s way and power slipping from the grasp of the supremelyconfident incumbent leader, Sadr had been transformed from a pariah into a potential kingmaker.
The elections have given Sadr’s political bloc at least 40 seats in the new 325-seat parliament, about 10 more than in the last legislature, which had 50 fewer seats. The Sadrist performance indicated that its support base remains rock solid. It was not splintered by the other lists on offer, as had widely been predicted.
Maliki’s people travelled to Qom after having seriously miscalculated the outcome of the 7 March election and having overestimated their support base, figuring that they would win enough votes to be able to ignore Sadr’s MPs in the inevitable post-election coalition-building.
It was a momentous about-face, which may have paid off. According to one key Maliki aide, Sami al-Askari, Sadr has shown a change of heart.
“He lifted his veto over Maliki,” said Askari. “The Sadrists have said there are no longer any red lines for [Maliki'scoalition], or for Maliki himself.”
As is often said in Iraq, the sheikh and the prime minister have history. Sadr fled to Iran in 2007 after styling himself first as a resistance leader against the US-led occupation, and then as a defender of Shia sectarian interests as Iraq erupted into civil war. By then, the Americans had lost patience with the man they had come to see as responsible almost in equal measure with al-Qaida in Iraq for the sectarian bloodbath that had spun completely out of control.
Maliki was at odds with Sadr for two main reasons, the first an uprising Sadr led in Karbala in early 2007, which prompted the prime minister to strap a pistol to his hip and drive down from Baghdad with a Swat team to sort things out. The second occurred in February 2008, one month before their association splintered for good. That month, Sadr’s supporters and militants aligned to his Mahdi Army briefly detained Maliki’s national security adviser, Mowafak al-Rubaie, at the Imam al-Kadhim mosque in the Baghdad suburb of Kadhimiya. The affront was an important reason for the Iraqi army’s raid, a month later, on Sadr’s strongholds in Basra and Baghdad’s Shia slum zone, Sadr City.
The fallout from the March raid, dubbed Charge of the Knights, still resonates throughout the streets of Sadr’s Baghdad stronghold, the sprawling shantytown on the city’s north-eastern outskirts that was named after the young sheikh’s late father. Sadr City has always been a barometer of the mood in Baghdad, a place where resentment seethes almost palpably among grinding poverty, teeming rubbish piles, buildings pancaked by all manner of bombs. Here, Maliki has been regarded for the past two years as persona non grata.
However, hours before the election results were announced on Friday night, Sadr City was strangely serene. The usual throng of at least 100,000 men knelt for Friday prayers on prayer mats strewn across the streets surrounding the Sadr office at the centre of town. Loyalists handed out photocopied handwritten statements from Sadr, sent from Qom, complete with his thumbprint, in which he appeared to urge all Sadrists to accept the election result.
There was little outward enmity towards Maliki, nor support for Allawi. There was, though, surprise at thesuggestion that Sadr and Maliki had agreed to do business.
“If Sayed Moqtada Sadr said this, then we would agree with him,” said a leading Sadrist and former deputy health minister, Hakim al-Zalami, who was jailed by the US military for 18 months on suspicion of being a leading member of the Mahdi Army. “But he has principles and core beliefs and I would be very surprised if he did.”
A spokesman for the Sadr office, which continues to run the exiled sheikh’s affairs, Sheikh Salman al-Franjie, said: “If Maliki returned for a second time, we would regard this as cheating. For sure [Askari] is lying. If Sayed Moqtada agreed to dealing with Maliki again, it would be the same as agreeing to the occupation.”
Sadr has remained implacable about the continuing presence of US forces in Iraq and has vowed to remain in exile until they leave. “This is one of the things they tried to convince him about in Qom,” said Askari. “He still believes the Americans have the upper hand. He doesn’t trust them at all and won’t accept that they can’t arrest him by themselves any more.”
Maliki’s defeat in the popular vote does not disqualify him from a second term as leader. Whoever can form a credible coalition in the complex rounds of negotiations following the election will be able to nominate their man. Whoever wins must deal with the reality that Moqtada al-Sadr is again a potent force.
• This article was amended on 29 March 2010: The original headline suggested that Moqtada al-Sadr held the key to a comeback by Nouri al-Maliki (who was in fact prime minister before the election). This has been corrected.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/28/iraq-al-maliki-shia-al-sadr/print
Exiled Iraqi sheikh may hold key to power in Iraq
Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintains an overlord’s hold over more than two million Shia Iraqis
The first in what could be the most crucial series of discussions to form Iraq’s new government took place early last week outside the country’s borders in the Iranian Shia shrine city of Qom.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor was a familiar firebrand in a black turban, Moqtada al-Sadr. Across from him was a delegation from the office of Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. They had come to seek a detente – and more importantly to find a way, any way, that the exiled cleric, who maintains an overlord’s hold over more than two million Shia Iraqis, would support Maliki being returned to office.
It was a triumphant moment for Sadr, who had been hounded out of town in 2007 by Maliki and the US army and marginalised as a spent force by American officials and most of the prime minister’s inner sanctum. Now, here he was being courted by his persecutors. In the two weeks since the 7 March general election, with the ballots steadily falling Ayad Allawi’s way and power slipping from the grasp of the supremelyconfident incumbent leader, Sadr had been transformed from a pariah into a potential kingmaker.
The elections have given Sadr’s political bloc at least 40 seats in the new 325-seat parliament, about 10 more than in the last legislature, which had 50 fewer seats. The Sadrist performance indicated that its support base remains rock solid. It was not splintered by the other lists on offer, as had widely been predicted.
Maliki’s people travelled to Qom after having seriously miscalculated the outcome of the 7 March election and having overestimated their support base, figuring that they would win enough votes to be able to ignore Sadr’s MPs in the inevitable post-election coalition-building.
It was a momentous about-face, which may have paid off. According to one key Maliki aide, Sami al-Askari, Sadr has shown a change of heart.
“He lifted his veto over Maliki,” said Askari. “The Sadrists have said there are no longer any red lines for [Maliki'scoalition], or for Maliki himself.”
As is often said in Iraq, the sheikh and the prime minister have history. Sadr fled to Iran in 2007 after styling himself first as a resistance leader against the US-led occupation, and then as a defender of Shia sectarian interests as Iraq erupted into civil war. By then, the Americans had lost patience with the man they had come to see as responsible almost in equal measure with al-Qaida in Iraq for the sectarian bloodbath that had spun completely out of control.
Maliki was at odds with Sadr for two main reasons, the first an uprising Sadr led in Karbala in early 2007, which prompted the prime minister to strap a pistol to his hip and drive down from Baghdad with a Swat team to sort things out. The second occurred in February 2008, one month before their association splintered for good. That month, Sadr’s supporters and militants aligned to his Mahdi Army briefly detained Maliki’s national security adviser, Mowafak al-Rubaie, at the Imam al-Kadhim mosque in the Baghdad suburb of Kadhimiya. The affront was an important reason for the Iraqi army’s raid, a month later, on Sadr’s strongholds in Basra and Baghdad’s Shia slum zone, Sadr City.
The fallout from the March raid, dubbed Charge of the Knights, still resonates throughout the streets of Sadr’s Baghdad stronghold, the sprawling shantytown on the city’s north-eastern outskirts that was named after the young sheikh’s late father. Sadr City has always been a barometer of the mood in Baghdad, a place where resentment seethes almost palpably among grinding poverty, teeming rubbish piles, buildings pancaked by all manner of bombs. Here, Maliki has been regarded for the past two years as persona non grata.
However, hours before the election results were announced on Friday night, Sadr City was strangely serene. The usual throng of at least 100,000 men knelt for Friday prayers on prayer mats strewn across the streets surrounding the Sadr office at the centre of town. Loyalists handed out photocopied handwritten statements from Sadr, sent from Qom, complete with his thumbprint, in which he appeared to urge all Sadrists to accept the election result.
There was little outward enmity towards Maliki, nor support for Allawi. There was, though, surprise at thesuggestion that Sadr and Maliki had agreed to do business.
“If Sayed Moqtada Sadr said this, then we would agree with him,” said a leading Sadrist and former deputy health minister, Hakim al-Zalami, who was jailed by the US military for 18 months on suspicion of being a leading member of the Mahdi Army. “But he has principles and core beliefs and I would be very surprised if he did.”
A spokesman for the Sadr office, which continues to run the exiled sheikh’s affairs, Sheikh Salman al-Franjie, said: “If Maliki returned for a second time, we would regard this as cheating. For sure [Askari] is lying. If Sayed Moqtada agreed to dealing with Maliki again, it would be the same as agreeing to the occupation.”
Sadr has remained implacable about the continuing presence of US forces in Iraq and has vowed to remain in exile until they leave. “This is one of the things they tried to convince him about in Qom,” said Askari. “He still believes the Americans have the upper hand. He doesn’t trust them at all and won’t accept that they can’t arrest him by themselves any more.”
Maliki’s defeat in the popular vote does not disqualify him from a second term as leader. Whoever can form a credible coalition in the complex rounds of negotiations following the election will be able to nominate their man. Whoever wins must deal with the reality that Moqtada al-Sadr is again a potent force.
• This article was amended on 29 March 2010: The original headline suggested that Moqtada al-Sadr held the key to a comeback by Nouri al-Maliki (who was in fact prime minister before the election). This has been corrected.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/28/iraq-al-maliki-shia-al-sadr/print
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