Doug Lorimer
On June 16, Reuters reported that rebel Iraqi Shiite Muslim leader Sayed Moqtada al Sadr had issued a statement calling on his Mahdi Army militia fighters in Najaf to abide by the terms of a frequently broken June 4 ceasefire agreement with the US Army's 1st Armoured Division.
Under the ceasefire's terms, in exchange for the withdrawal of US troops from Najaf, a city with 600,000 residents and site of many of Shia Islam's holiest shrines, Madhi Army fighters who are not residents of Najaf were to return to their home towns. According to Reuters, Sadr said that "each of the individuals of the Mahdi Army, the loyalists who made sacrifices... should return to their governorates to do their duty".
Sadr's statement was issued a day after US President George Bush said Washington would not stand in the way of a negotiated settlement between Sadr, who US occupation officials vowed in early April to "capture or kill", and the recently US-appointed Iraqi "interim government".
According to a June 16 US Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRN) agency report, Iraq's new ceremonial president, Shiek Ghazi al Yawer, "has invited Sadr to participate as a political leader in Iraqi elections scheduled for January".
Three days earlier, Qais al Khazaali, an aide to Sadr, announced that "we are planning on founding a party to express the views of the people because they have placed their confidence in us. If we found this party, it will participate in elections and it will be built on our popular base."
Sadr's armed revolt, which began on April 4 in Baghdad's Sadr City, the huge Shiite working-class slum named after his father, a grand ayatollah who was killed by Saddam Hussein's regime in 1999, has not only been organising against the US occupation but also against the Shiite religious establishment.
The June 3 Washington Post reported: "In Shiite terminology, [Shiite Muslim leader Grand Ayatollah Ali] Sistani and the party represent the 'silent seminary' that shies from speaking out directly on social or political issues. Sadr's father, and now Sadr, represent the 'speaking seminary', which tackles such issues head-on."
The Post reported that "Sadr's father had a style of preaching that set him apart from traditional religious figures. He directly addressed social and economic needs".
Sadr, the Post added, is viewed as "a leading voice of the poor, a patriot fighting foreign occupation and the heir to a tradition of speaking out against injustice and tyranny", whose message "reverberates deeply in Iraqi society".
Unlike Islamists like Osama bin Laden, Sadr has not called on Iraqis to wage a jihad against US citizens. Instead, while the US military was unleashing jet-bombers, helicopter gunships, artillery and tanks against the city of Fallujah, on April 6, Sadr issued an appeal calling "upon the American people to stand beside their brethren, the Iraqi people, who are suffering an injustice by your rulers and the occupying army. Otherwise, Iraq will be another Vietnam for America and the occupiers."
Sadr's armed rebellion began after the US-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) banned his Baghdad newspaper and announced the existence of a three-month-old arrest warrant, supposedly issued by an Iraqi judge, claiming that Sadr was responsible for the killing of a pro-US cleric. However, the US-appointed Iraqi justice minister stated that he had no knowledge of the warrant, and the Iraqi Jurists Association declared it "illegal".
By mid May, US troops and the Mahdi Army were engaged in fierce street battles in Sadr City, and in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf, Kufa and Karbala. Then, on May 27, the CPA announced that the US Army had entered into a ceasefire with Sadr's fighters in Najaf.
While US officials claimed that they had defeated Sadr's forces, the May 29 Chicago Tribune reported that Major General Martin Dempsey, commander of the US troops besieging Najaf, had told the paper that US commanders were seeking a cease-fire to avoid Sadr's rebellion becoming "a popular uprising, because if he gained broad support of the Shiite population, there truly would have been nothing we could have done".
A week later, on June 8, KRN reported that an opinion poll conducted for the CPA in mid May had found that Sadr's popularity had soared since he launched his armed rebellion. According to KRN, the poll had found "that support for al Sadr was just 2.8 percentage points behind the 70%" support for Sistani.
On June 15, Associated Press reported further details of the poll's results, including that "81% of Iraqis said they had an improved opinion of al Sadr in May from three months earlier, and 64% said the acts of his insurgents had made Iraq more unified". By contrast, Sheikh Ghazi al Yawar had an approval rating of 7.2%, while Ayad Allawi, a long-time CIA stooge who was appointed Iraq's interim prime minister by the CPA on May 31, was supported by only 4.8% of Iraqis.
"If elections are held tomorrow, Moqtada would win", said Saadoun Dulame, whose Iraqi Centre for Research and Strategic Studies conducted the poll.
From Green Left Weekly, June 23, 2004.
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