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| Islam and the West | |
| 02 Aug 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com | |
| Muqtada, the Future of Iraq? | |
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By Robert S. Eshelman, In These Times. Posted July 29, 2008.
Veteran Iraq reporter Patrick Cockburn presents a historical portrait of the man leading the only true mass political movement in Iraq.
"Firebrand." It was the ubiquitous moniker used to describe Iraq's fiercely anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr when, in March 2004, his leering portrait became commonplace among American media reports of Iraq.
American Viceroy L. Paul Bremer III had just shut down al-Sadr's Baghdad newspaper, al-Hawza, and hinted at arresting him, ushering in the first of several confrontations with al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army.
More recently, this label has given way to that of "Iranian-backed" -- conjuring comparisons to Lebanon's Hezbollah and Palestine's besieged Hamas party.
In both cases, these depictions serve to portray al-Sadr as an irrational, extremist proxy, who, to a great degree, has contributed to Iraq's instability and continues to be a major obstacle to peace in Iraq, if not across the Middle East.
But as Patrick Cockburn, the Iraq correspondent for The Independent of London, argues convincingly in Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival and the Struggle for Iraq (Scribner, May 2008), such representations overlook the causes of al-Sadr's rise to political prominence. More importantly, they grossly misrepresent his unique blend of Shiite religious doctrine and Iraqi nationalism, as well as the fact that he leads the only truly mass political movement in Iraq.
"Part of the mystery concerning Muqtada has its origin in simple ignorance," writes Cockburn. Muqtada's emergence as a central figure in Iraq, he continues, is surprising only if one is unfamiliar with "the bloody and dramatic story of resistance to Saddam Hussein by Iraqi Shia as a whole and the al-Sadr family in particular."
Over the first several chapters of Muqtada, Cockburn traces this largely untold, and, indeed, bloody chronicle.
At the heart of Muqtada's backstory are his father-in-law -- Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr -- and his father -- Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr. Both attained the honorific of Grand Ayatollah and were killed by Saddam's regime. Baqir was executed in 1980 and Sadiq was assassinated in 1999, along with two of Muqtada's brothers.
These two figures -- who remain highly revered by Iraqi Shiite today -- bequeathed Muqtada a bounty of religious and political legitimacy upon becoming the leader of the Sadrist movement.
Bound up with the Sadr family biography is an intricate history of modern Iraq: intra-Shiite rivalries; the brutal Iran-Iraq war in the '80s; the collapse of secular, Iraqi nationalism under Saddam; and the failed Shiite uprising of 1991.
Cockburn, who has been reporting from Iraq since 1977, nimbly weaves together these developments, which are essential to understanding contemporary Iraqi politics, without ever straying far from his central object of inquiry -- Muqtada's ascension to political significance.
American dailies churn out stories of a centralized, albeit struggling, political system -- where power emanates from the American Embassy, the military and, nominally, from Iraqi governmental institutions. But Cockburn's articles convey a more complicated, troubling view of the dysfunctional occupation, and expose the deep wounds of Iraq's sectarian bloodletting. (His previous book on Iraq, The Occupation, was short-listed for a National Book Critics Circle award in 2007.)
Following the U.S. invasion, Muqtada's keen political and military sensibilities allowed him to step into a central position on the political landscape. During the spring and summer of 2004, he and his Mehdi Army faced down American forces in Najaf and the Sadr City neighbourhood of Baghdad, taking heavy losses. Since then, his army has developed from rag-tag groups of irregulars into a more coherent and capable, although not yet highly organized, fighting force.
During that time, Muqtada skillfully played his hand vis-à-vis the United States and the interim Iraqi government. He sometimes took forceful stands while at other times made tactical retreats. At the dawn of Iraq's 2005 elections, he entered the electoral realm, when large political gains where almost certain.
Muqtada does not appear as a principal character in Cockburn's book until the ninth chapter, roughly halfway through, and is rarely quoted directly, not to mention interviewed at length. This may seem odd at first but is, in fact, what makes this book so strikingly relevant.
Like his backstory of the Iraqi Shiite and the Sadr family, Cockburn shows that Muqtada's rise has as much, perhaps more, to do with the setting -- American military and political blunders, sectarian conflict, and intra-Shiite politics -- than it does with any of Muqtada's particular attributes, however crucial those might be.
In a similar vein, Cockburn steers clear of exoticizing Iraq's Shiites, though he does not hesitate to acknowledge the role that faith plays in mobilizing them into action. He recalls how, after the fall of Saddam, millions of Shiites embarked on a mass pilgrimage to Kerbala for the first time in decades. A few months later, these millions again heeded the call of their religious hierarchy and took to the streets of Baghdad, demanding free elections.
Cockburn also takes up Sadr's difficult-to-pin-down links to sectarian violence and his supposed ties to Iran, both of which are often overblown but in need of inquiry.
"Muqtada al-Sadr is the most important and surprising figure to emerge in Iraq since the U.S. invasion," writes Cockburn. "He is the Messianic leader of the religious and political movement of the impoverished Shia underclass whose lives were ruined by a quarter century of war, repression and sanctions."
Having toppled Saddam from power in spring 2003, the United States was taken completely by surprise by Muqtada's power and influence.
"Had [Muqtada] been part of the political process from the beginning," Cockburn writes, "the chances of creating a peaceful, prosperous Iraq would have been greater."
Cockburn reveals by twists and turns Muqtada's emergence on the political scene and his deftness in building his political movement.
Based on decades of reportage and peppered with interviews with Mehdi fighters, Sadrist insiders and others close to, or knowledgeable of, Muqtada and the Sadrist movement, Cockburn delivers an important book on the post-invasion period.
With provincial elections in Iraq slated to occur later this year and Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki's government clamping down on Sadrist forces in Baghdad and in the Shiite south, Cockburn's Muqtada serves as a necessary guidebook for interpreting the turbulent course that Iraqi politics has taken over the past several years -- and where it is likely to go next.
Robert Eshelman's articles have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, In These Times and The Nation. http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/93173/muqtada%2C_the_future_of_iraq/?page=entire |
Islam and the West 02 Aug 2008, NewAgeIslam.Com Will Bush Bully Maliki Into Backing Off a Withdrawal Timeline -- Again?
By Gareth Porter, IPS News.
Posted July 31, 2008.
Now is not the first time the Iraqi Prime Minister sought a timetable for U.S. withdrawal. Tools
WASHINGTON, Jul 28 (IPS) -- Many official and unofficial proponents of a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq are dismissing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's demand for a U.S. timeline for withdrawal as political posturing, assuming that he will abandon it under pressure.
But that demand was foreshadowed by an episode in June 2006 in which al-Maliki circulated a draft policy calling for negotiation of just such a withdrawal timetable and the George W. Bush administration had to intervene to force the prime minister to drop it.
The context of al-Maliki's earlier advocacy of a timetable for withdrawal was the serious Iraqi effort to negotiate an agreement with seven major Sunni armed groups that had begun under his predecessor Ibrahim al-Jaafari in early 2006. The main Sunni demand in those talks had been for a timetable for full withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Under the spur of those negotiations, al-Jaafari and Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaei had developed a plan for taking over security in all 18 provinces of Iraq from the United States by the end of 2007. During his first week as prime minister in late May, al-Maliki referred twice publicly to that plan.
At the same time al-Maliki began working on a draft "national reconciliation plan", which was in effect a road map to final agreement with the Sunni armed groups. The Sunday Times of London, which obtained a copy of the draft, reported Jun. 23, 2006 that it included the following language:
"We must agree on a time schedule to pull out the troops from Iraq, while at the same time building up the Iraqi forces that will guarantee Iraqi security, and this must be supported by a United Nations Security Council decision."
That formula, linking a withdrawal timetable with the build-up of Iraqi forces, was consistent with the position taken by Sunni armed groups in their previous talks with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, which was that the timetable for withdrawal would be "linked to the timescale necessary to rebuild Iraq's armed forces and security services". One of the Sunni commanders who had negotiated with Khalilzad described the resistance position in those words to the London-based Arabic-language Alsharq al Awsat in May 2006.
The Iraqi government draft was already completed when Bush arrived in Baghdad June 13 without any previous consultation with al-Maliki, giving the Iraqi leader five minutes' notice that Bush would be meeting him in person rather than by videoconference.
The al-Maliki cabinet sought to persuade Bush to go along with the withdrawal provision of the document. In his press conference upon returning, Bush conceded that Iraqi cabinet members in the meeting had repeatedly brought up the issue of reconciliation with the Sunni insurgents.
In fact, after Bush had left, Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, a Sunni, said he had asked Bush to agree to a timetable for withdrawal of all foreign forces. Then President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, released a statement of support for that request.
Nevertheless, Bush signalled his rejection of the Iraqi initiative in his June 14 press conference, deceitfully attributing his own rejection of a timetable to the Iraqi government. "And the willingness of some to say that if we're in power we'll withdraw on a set timetable concerns people in Iraq," Bush declared.
When the final version of the plan was released to the public June 25, the offending withdrawal timetable provision had disappeared. Bush was insisting that the al-Maliki government embrace the idea of a "conditions-based" U.S. troop withdrawal. Khalilzad gave an interview with Newsweek the week the final reconciliation plan was made public in which he referred to a "conditions-driven roadmap".
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius further revealed in a June 28 column that Khalilzad had told him that Gen. George Casey, then commander of the Multi-National Force -- Iraq, was going to meet with al-Maliki about the formation of a "joint U.S.-Iraqi committee" to decide on "the conditions related to a road map for an ultimate withdrawal of U.S. troops". Thus al-Maliki was being forced to agree to a negotiating body that symbolized a humiliating dictation by the occupying power to a client government.
The heavy pressure that had obviously been applied to al-Maliki on the issue during and after the Bush visit was resented by al-Maliki and al-Rubaie. The Iraqi rancor over that pressure was evident in the op-ed piece by al-Rubaei published in the Washington Post a week after Bush's visit.
Although the article did not refer directly to al-Maliki's reconciliation plan and its offer to negotiate a timetable for withdrawal, the very first line implied that the issue was uppermost in the Iraqi prime minister's mind. "There has been much talk about a withdrawal of U.S. and coalition troops from Iraq," wrote al-Rubaie, "but no defined timeline has yet been set."
Al-Rubaei declared "Iraq's ambition to have full control of the country by the end of 2008". Although few readers understood the import of that statement, it was an indication that the al-Maliki regime was prepared to negotiate complete withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of 2008.
Then the national security adviser indicated that the government already had its own targets for the first two phases of foreign troop withdrawal: withdrawal of more than 30,000 troops to under 100,000 foreign troops by the end of 2006 and withdrawal of "most of the remaining troops" -- i.e., to less than 50,000 troops -- by end of the 2007.
The author explained why the "removal" of foreign troops was so important to the Iraqi government: it would "remove psychological barriers and the reason that many Iraqis joined the resistance in the first place"; it would also "allow the Iraqi government to engage with some of our neighbours that have to date been at the very least sympathetic to the resistance …" Finally, al-Rubaie asserted, it would "legitimize the Iraqi government in the eyes of its own people."
He also took a carefully-worded shot at the Bush administration's actions in overruling the centrepiece of Iraq's reconciliation policy. "While Iraq is trying to gain independence from the United States," he wrote, "some influential foreign figures" were still "trying to spoon-feed our government and take a very proactive role in many key decisions."
The 2006 episode left a lasting imprint on both the Bush and al-Maliki regimes, which is still very much in evidence in the present conflict over a withdrawal timetable. The Bush White House continues to act as though it is confident that al-Maliki can be pressured to back down as he was forced to do before. And at least some of al-Maliki's determination to stand up to Bush in 2008 is related to the bitterness that he and al-Rubaie, among others, still feel over the way Bush humiliated them in 2006.
It appears that Bush is making the usual dominant power mistake in relations to al-Maliki. He may have been a pushover in mid-2006, but the circumstances have changed, in Iraq, in the U.S.-Iraq-Iran relations and in the United States. The al-Maliki regime now has much greater purchase to defy Bush than it had two years ago.
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Asadullah Syed
9:04 AM
Sultan Shahin
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