Moqtada al-Sadr

Moqtada al-Sadr is a Shi'ite political and militia leader in Iraq, who has been active in Islamic sectarian conflict and internal warfare, but is increasingly involved in the government process. His political organization is called the Mahdi Army; its military wing is variously called the Mahdi Army or the Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM). It has not been a political party in the classic sense, but rather backs candidates.

He was not a significant figure before the fall of Saddam Hussein, although he had relatives that were notable in Shi'a Iraq.

Moqtada had been considered too fiery and young while his elders were alive. When his father, Sadiq al-Sadr and two sons were shot in 1999, probably on orders of Saddam, a network of schools and charities built by his family. But winning the allegiance of the elder Sadr's followers was not guaranteed. The ICG reported he was "by no means his father's natural heir." Muqtada's decision to form a government in the waning days of the Baath Party did little to sway the critics. "Many Shiites were shocked" by the move, a close associate of the Sadrist movement told ICG in January 2006. "They felt that he was too young, that he was nothing but a za'tut," or ignorant child.

He fought with the major Shi'a party, SCIRI (now ISCI), and the most influential Shiite leader was Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, brokered the agreement between SCIRI and the Mahdi Army. An additional middle-class Shi'a party has emerged, the Islamic Dawa Party of Prime Minister of Iraq Nouri al-Maliki. According to Vali Nasr at the Council on Foreign Relations, "by 2008 Muqtada had expanded his movement from being essentially a Baghdad street force into 'a major Shiite movement, with parliamentary presence, political presence, as well as now a very large military presence on the street.' Nasr says Sadr 'now represents one of the two most important Shia blocs in the country.'"

Positioning within Shi'a Iraq

He and his relatives have been associated with the lower classes of Iraqi Shi'as, and have taken a populist role, sometimes called class struggle. Early in his movement's progression, it began providing social services; the resemblance to Hezbollah's building a base as a shadow government is not coincidental.

Early actions

In 2003, he did not consider the Iraqi Governing Council responsive to the urgent situations, and urged resistance.

On the day of the sacred Ashura observance on March 2, bombs, set off by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Sunni organization, killed 270 and wounded hundreds more in the Karbala and Kadhimiyah areas

American civil viceroy L. Paul Bremer, was concerned, in early March, with Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf, who was becoming increasingly militant in reaching for power as his Shi'ite rival, Sistani, fought for Shi'a power in the constitutional process. He took effective control of the Kufa mosque and preached violence from there.

Complicating the situation with Najaf, [Kufa, and other southern areas were that they were under operational control of the Polish division commander, with subordinate Bulgarian, Central American, Spanish and Ukrainian units, each with different rules of engagement. The Spanish contingent was the one most immediately affected. Bremer asked LTG Ricardo Sanchez to plan a way to deal with the situation there. Bremer ordered Sanchez on March 27, to close al-Sadr's newspaper, Hawza, for 60 days; this took place without violence but with much protest.

Operations in Najaf

On April 3, special operations forces arrested one of al-Sadr's assistants, and al-Sadr responded with a call for arms. By the 4th, a 1st Cavalry Division platoon was ambushed, unaware that the arrest had taken place or that high vigilance was indicated; Sanchez called this a breakdown in communications at the division commander level; the 1st Cav was taking over from the 1st Armored Division (U.S.).

Al-Sadr's attacks spread across southern Iraq, and he took control of the capitals of Basra, Al Kut, Nasiriyah, and Basra. They fought British and Dutch forces in Basra. In Kufa, al-Sadr put his base in the Great Mosque, creating the extremely difficult problem of attacking a religious sanctuary in a war where religion was a major factor.

Religious status

While he is a religious activist from a family of clerics, he did not complete clerical studies before his political involvement.

But in December 2007 he issued a decree calling on followers to devote more time to religious endeavors, and announced his intention to enroll in the conservative Al-Hawzah, or seminary, in Najaf. Babak Rahimi, an expert in Shiite politics and former fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, writes that Sadr's religious move indicate "a major change in the movement's structure that could have serious repercussions for the future of Iraq." Sadr's motivation may also be to "reinforce his Iraqi identity," Rahimi adds, although the cleric's whereabouts in mid-2008 may complicate that effort: Most experts believe he took his religious studies to the Iranian city of Qom—raising questions about Iran's influence on the cleric and his militia.

Political involvement

He entered the government in 2005, and his bloc won 32 of 275 parliamentary seats in the December 2005 national elections. Again remembering that his positioning involves class as well as religious and ethnic identity, it provided representation for Shi'ites that felt disenfranchised within their kin group. Vali Nasr said it made him "a kingmaker," as he had a role in getting al-Maliki into the Prime Minister post; he also put allies into political posts, emphasizing the social service ministries and the provincial governorates.

In a January 2006 interview with Al Arabiya news channel, Sadr explained his political coming of age this way: "The Sadrist movement first resorted to peaceful resistance, then to armed resistance, and finally to political resistance."

While he was at religious studies, some of his more radical followers broke away and continued fighting, while 200 political allies split from his movement in March 2009. They formed a group called Shura al-Ulla'ama, or Clerics Advisory. According to Sheikh Youseff al-Nassiry, a leader of the breakaway movement, said in an interview that "the group, the aims to perform social services like those offered by the Sadr movement and to become a political force, but it wants to distance itself from the Sadr movement's violent elements. The group, which is setting up its main office in Baghdad's Jadriya area plans to run candidates in national elections to be held as soon as December. They met for the first time on March 21 at Baghdad's Babylon Hotel, along with Zuhair Chalabi, head of the government's reconciliation committee.

He visited Turkey in May 2009 and had regional security discussions with Prime Minister of Turkey Tayyip Recep Erdogan and President of Turkey Abdullah Gul. The focus was on the disputed area of Kirkuk, involving ethnic conflict between Shi’a Turkmen, Kurds and Sunni Arabs.

U.S. recognition

After Saddam's ouster in 2003, he was treated strictly as an insurgent, but, as time went on, there were informal contacts.

In May 2007, four factions of Jaish al-Mahdi were fighting one another in a Baghdad neighborhood. Ricks quoted Kilcullen as saying that the U.S. command sent a message to "JAM Central" in Najaf to deal with it, and "because we treated them as the authority, they cleaned it up."

From the U.S. perspective, he was a threat, but a threat that would not go away. GEN Ray Odierno said, in January 2008, "we are now meeting with them, for the first time. He's clearly moving more to a humanitarian approach." American officials started calling him "the honorable", and GEN David Petraeus, in February, used the honorific "al-Sayyid", referring to him as a descendant of the Prophet.