Moqtada Sadr is known as the maverick of Iraqi politics. While he earned much praise for taking on the Americans, his subsequent somersaults have created many problems. He enjoys widespread support among the masses but his unorthodox political tactics have caused him to lose credibility.
Millions of Iraqis, setting aside political differences, joined hands in a peaceful rally in Baghdad on January 17 to demand the ouster of all US forces from the country.
Sayid Muqtada al Sadr’s visit at the end of July to meet Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman raised more than eyebrows. What was a respected Shi‘i alim doing sipping coffee with the virulently anti-Shi‘i Wahhabis?
Seyyed Moqtada al-Sadr, one of the most prominent political-religious figures in Iraq has made a surprise announcement to quit politics. If he sticks to this decision, it will have serious repercussions for Iraq's politics that is heading for elections in two months' time.
As Iraq has lurched from one crisis to another since the US invasion in 2003, one figure has become increasingly influential and even dominant in the country’s politics: young Shi’a leader Muqtada al-Sadr. KHALIL FADL profiles the man some regard as a future leader of the country.
After months of wishing away young anti-American Shi’a alim Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki is trying to marginalize the Sadrist Current (al-Tayyar al-Sadri) by military means. But the Iraqi military offensive against the Sadrists, which was supposed to demonstrate the power of the central government, has actually laid bare its weaknesses and highlighted the political weight of Sadr’s movement. Operation Cavalry Charge (Sawlat al-Fursan), which began on March 25 in Basra and set off clashes with Mahdi Army fighters in several cities throughout southern Iraq and in the Baghdad itself, has also underlined the growing influence of Iran in post-Saddam Iraq.
Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, the young, staunchly anti-American firebrand of the Iraqi Shi‘a community, has been largely absent from view for more than a year, but the tense anticipation with which decision-makers in Baghdad and Washington awaited his expected announcement at the end of February showed his continued importance to Iraq's political scene and its future.
A country that has been looking down the precipice of sectarian and ethnic strife for the past few years can certainly do without more violent intra-communal rivalry. Yet it was exactly such a dangerous scenario that seemed to be unfolding when 3,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen, supported by military tanks, aircraft and hundreds of US and Polish troops, on November 17 launched Operation Lion's Leap in the Iraqi city of Diwaniyyah, the capital of the south-central province of Qadisiyyah. The assault was supposed to flush out armed militiamen loyal to Shi’a alim Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr from the city, which has been the ground of a turf-war between Sadr's faction and its Shi’a archrival, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) led by Sayyid Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim.
Although US and Iraqi officials talked up the successes of the new Baghdad security plan implemented in early February, events on the ground suggest little has changed. Speaking to the media, officials said that the numbers of deaths in the capital dropped by up to 80 percent in the first five days of the plan.
My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III with Malcolm McConnell. Pub: Simon & Schuster, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, 2006. Pp: 417. Hbk: $27.00.
September 2004 was described as “a month of death in Iraq” by one Arab commentator after a series of major clashes in which at least a thousand Iraqis, many of them civilians, were killed...
One of the questions asked before the so-called transfer of power from US pro-consul Paul Bremer to Iyad Allawi at the end of June was whether the new Iraqi government would be able to prevent another brutal and murderous US assault on an Iraqi city like the one on Falluja in April...
The key achievement of the resistance is Iraq is not difficult to identify: by maintaining constant pressure on the US occupation forces, as well as those of the US’s allies, from the outset of the invasion to the present, the Iraqi mujahideen have totally disproved the US’s claims...
The Mahdi Army, led by Iraqi Shi’ah leader Muqtada al-Sadr, has marked the end of another chapter in its two-and-half-month-long armed insurrection against the US-led occupation troops: on June 24 it declared a unilateral ceasefire in the Baghdad slum-township of Sadr City...
The Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, one of the holiest shrines in Iraq, was reportedly damaged by shell-fire on May 25, as US troops maintained their pressure on the al-Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr...
With the US presidential elections due to be held in November, and painfully aware of the fact that the terrorist attack on Madrid in March was timed for maximum political impact in Spain's elections, the Bush regime is desperate for something they can present as progress in Iraq as soon as possible...
Although the outcome is still unresolved, the ongoing stand-off between the US-led occupation forces and supporters of young Shi’i alim Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr can hardly be anything but ominous for the neo-conservative hawks in Washington...
Ayatullah Muhammed Sadiq al-Sadr was a marked man the moment he demanded that the Iraqi regime release 106 Islamic scholars jailed since the March 1991 uprising in Southern Iraq. He was gunned down together with his two sons - Mustafa and Muammal - in the holy city of Najaf on February 19, a week after his defiant call.
