The Fractured Majority
News: What role for Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army in the new, "free," Iraq?
February 7, 2005
|
|
Friday prayers at the grand mosque in Kufa, with their energy and fervor, have been compared by other correspondents to a rock concert. The description couldn't be more apt. On Friday, at least 10,000 men filled the mosque and its dirt-floor courtyard (the mosque is at present being renovated) some coming up with facefuls of construction dust when they bowed in prayer, then waving their fingers in the air in the manner of their leader, Moqtada Al-Sadr, whose praises they chant.
"God pray on Mohamed and his family members! Make the imams victorious! Damn their enemies and give victory to their son! Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada! Ya Allah, ya Mohamed, ya Ali, ya Medhi! Give us victory!" (repeat)
Kufa is an important pilgrimage site for Shiite Muslims, one of three in Iraq. According to Shiite tradition, the town, a couple kilometers east of Najaf and about 170 south of Baghdad, is where Ali (Mohamed's son-in-law and nephew, whom Shia consider the rightful heir to lead the Muslim community after the prophet's death) took up residence after being exiled from Mecca. Kufa Mosque is where Sadr's father, Mohamed Bakr Al-Sadr, delivered sermons until he was assassinated, most likely by Saddam's security forces, in 1999. It was closed after that and reopened and used by Moqtada after the invasion, and then closed again after the last round of fighting, in August, between the US military and Sadr's militia, the Jeish Al-Medhi. Ali's tomb may be in Najaf, but Kufa has its own significance. Sadr followers believe that the town will be the site of the reappearance of the Medhi, or the Twelfth Imam, a religious leader who vanished centuries ago but will return to lead the Jeish Al-Medhi (jeish means army) to victory against an army of foreign invaders.
The whole account, called "The Medhi Episode," is laid out in a four-volume set of encyclopedias published in the 1970s by Mohamed Bakr Al-Sadr. Perhaps the elder Sadr was simply drawing on past history -- many of the men from prominent families within the Sadr movement proudly speak with pride of how their grandfathers led the 1920 revolution that cowed the British -- but his end-of-days story rings true with many. When the US Army got here, these guys were already spoiling for a fight, believing it their destiny, and they easily substituted US troops for the book's invading "Sufiani Army."
As the votes pile up for the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of mostly Shiite politicians led by Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim and backed by Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, the split becomes more evident. (Sistani had a long-running beef with Mohamed Bakr Al-Sadr owing to the former's refusal to call, as Sadr did, for armed resistance to Saddam.) The candidates who ran with Sadr's tacit support in the elections received few votes, and Sadr followers are bitter toward Hakim for going into exile while they stayed and bore the brunt of Saddam's final purges. They accuse him, moreover, of being a tool of Teheran. Sadr's official representatives will openly disparage the septuagenarian cleric only in private, but Sadr's followers do not have to be so careful with their statements:
"Sistani issues a fatwa [an edict] for people to vote, but why doesn't he issue one regarding the lack of electricity or fuel or for the Americans to leave?" one of the men at prayers asked.
Ghaith Al-Tamimi, a sheikh from the Sadr movement I was traveling with, accused the marjaiya (the Shiite religious hierarchy in which Sistani holds the top spot) of closing down the Kufa Mosque, though I've been unable to confirm this. However, it was Ayad Allawi's interim government that gave permission for the mosque to be reopened, perhaps as a show of good will to Sadr's followers. (Although, unless the American army and the Iraqi police stop arresting Sadr deputies and members of the Medhi, any good will is likely to be fleeting.) Sadr's movement is strapped for cash, but it's making inroads into the present government despite even as its political clout wanes. The Sadrists are close to working out a deal with the Ministry of Electricity (the power infrastructure was attacked at a rate of more than once a day last year and the number of attacks appears to be rising, according the ministry) under which the Mehdi will provide militiamen as guards.
Perhaps this is simply a pragmatic decision by Sadr to give his largely young and underemployed followers something to do — the Medhi are angry, alienated, and dissatisfied with the new government, even more so with the occupiers.
"Naser Saadi [a prominent Sadr representative] and I had to go stand in front of an American tank last week to prevent some of the young men in Sadr City from attacking it," Tamimi said.
The trip down to Kufa/ Najaf is a straight shot through the "triangle of death." Tamimi, who rode with me in my car, was my insurance (though no plan is bulletproof), along with his friend, a man who acts as a go-between for Sadr and the fighters in Falluja.
"Those are mujahedeen," said the go-between, pointing to a group of men standing on the side of road, between a pair of pickup trucks, clad in black leather jackets and dishdashas (floor-length robes) somewhere near Hilla.
"How do you know?"
"I just know."
I used to travel this route frequently -- it's a nice drive, and goes past the site of ancient Babylon. The only thing I really noticed that looked terribly different was an utterly destroyed police station in Mahmoudiya and date palm groves along the road in which all the trees had been cut below the foliage. I saw only one American patrol in the triangle, and no Iraqi army presence off the highway.
When we got to the police checkpoint before going over the bridge and into Kufa, I suddenly realized why the sheikh had been so happy to help me get south.
"Take out your press badge," he said. The Najaf police have waged war against Sadr, leaving many of his representatives unable to travel between Baghdad and the south. On Friday, they had set up a checkpoint specifically to catch members of the Jeish Al-Medhi headed down to Kufa for prayers. At one point, shots were fired by police at an angry group of Medhis who weren't allowed through. "We escorted you," Tamimi said, smiling, as he took a couple stacks of Sadr flyers out of our car and left them with some people he knew before we approached the checkpoint. "Now you are escorting us."
The Sadr movement is accustomed to working the underground, though it's less likely to accept that in the "free" Iraq. Perhaps the only thing the Medhis have in common with the Shiite majority is the desire to impose sharia law -- that is, religious law -- with its strictures on, for example, women's status and role in society. (During my sleepover at the house of the top Sadr rep in the south -- which included a bedtime reading from the Medhi encyclopedia -- I was plied with food, but the women doing the cooking never appeared.)
Further into Najaf, the split becomes more evident. Parts of the city destroyed during the fighting last August between Sadr's men and US troops are being rebuilt, and popular wisdom has it that Sadr is hated here for sparking the uprising that shut off the fat flow of tourism dinars from pilgrims coming to the sacred Imam Ali shrine. However, in the goldseller's market, a slightly different story emerges.
"We sold our inventory to help the families of those killed in the fighting," said one man, Ali Abdul Hussein. "We are with any honest person, especially those fighting against the occupation of this holy place. Of course people supported Sadr — how do you think the intifada lasted so long?"
David Enders is a 24-year-old freelance journalist who has spent more than a year reporting from Iraq since the end of the invasion. His first book, Baghdad Bulletin: Dispatches on the American Occupation, will be released by the University of Michigan Press in April.
Photo: AP/Wide World Photos
