But al-Sadr decided to leave the mosque earlier today, and we should all be relieved. Although fighting continued sporadically in Baghdad and throughout the Shiite south of the country, al-Sadr retreated to his offices in the holy city of Najaf, claiming he’d “pledged not to allow a drop of blood to be shed except my own.” He said he didn’t want to see the American “scum and evil people” desecrate the holy shrine. In mullahspeak, that sounds very much like “let’s make a deal.”
Should the American and other occupation forces bargain with al-Sadr?
It’s a tough call, and the future of the entire Iraqi adventure may hinge on the response. Get it wrong, and this could be the beginning of the end of America’s role in the country. Get it right, and this junior cleric trading on the reputation of a revered father could become a turbaned has-been.
Many Arabs (and some U.S.-government experts) will tell you that frank brutality has always been required to rule Iraq, and they’ll recount a famous story about Kufa some 1,300 years ago. A new governor named Al Haggag Ibn Yusuf al-Thaqafi had just taken charge of the rebellious province. “Oh, people of Kufa,” he told the crowd in the mosque, “I see before me heads ripe for the harvest and the reaper; and verily I am the man to do it. Already I see the blood between the turbans and the beards.” But martyrdom and violence have been endemic for so long in Iraq that while force can buy calm, it rarely buys peace. In the 1930s, after the British occupied the country, author Freya Stark wrote of Kufa that “the desert waves seem to break against this shore in a foam of blood.”
An American-led occupation which aims at building democracy in Iraq has to learn a subtlety that tyrants from al-Thaqafi to Saddam Hussein never cared to master. So far, it hasn’t.
The pudgy-faced al-Sadr, whose father was an Iraqi grand ayatollah murdered by Saddam (and whose spiritual guide is an ayatollah in Iran), has been inciting his followers against the Americans and those who work with them ever since the fall of the old regime. On the big issues, like negotiating the future political structure of Iraq, he’s been eclipsed in recent months by other clerics, especially the sage Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. They have been willing to tolerate the Americans for a while, at least, as long as the Shiite majority of the country emerges on top.
A few weeks ago I went to the mosque in Kufa to meet a few of al-Sadr’s young followers. They were articulate, disciplined, and said, as you’d expect, that they were ready to fight and die if they were asked. Out of deference, they said they’d follow Sistani’s teaching, but they wanted the occupation to end, and soon, and not only on paper.
More importantly, these young men were convinced the only reason the United States was in the country was to take its riches. They said the occupation was spreading corruption; that Iraqi girls were prostituting themselves with occupation soldiers from the Spanish contingent. There was no shaking their conviction, both reflected and incited by al-Sadr, that the occupation had brought a new and alien evil into their land.
It’s hard to fight back against rumors like these, especially when they come from the pulpit. You’d like to have someone with a similar voice at least as strong and credible, and that’s just what this occupation lacks in the Shiite heartland. The ayatollahs being cast as helpful now are enduring the U.S. presence, not endorsing it.
A year ago there was one Iraqi religious figure who looked like he could win his people to the American side. Abdel Majid al-Khoei, another son and brother of martyrs, had lived for years as an exile in London and seemed to be an imposing figure. But when he returned to Iraq a year ago this week, he was murdered in the holy shrine at Najaf. His alleged killers: Moqtada al-Sadr’s men.
From that point on, the United States found itself drawn into Shiite religious politics as fractured as the mirrored ceiling of the tomb in Kufa. Various Shiite civilians, like Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi, seemed to be playing all sides of the religious question. al-Sadr continued to build his following, and his banned militia.
Now the United States is supposed to hand over nominal sovereignty to an Iraqi government by June 30, and the project isn’t going well. Al-Sadr was identified as a spoiler who could make it worse. Racing against the clock it set, the Coalition opted late last month for direct confrontation. Al-Sadr’s newspaper had published rumors that some of the recent suicide attacks on Iraqis were really American missiles. The Americans shut the paper down. Al-Sadr’s followers mounted protests. The Coalition arrested one of his key aides and charged him in connection with Al-Khoei’s murder last year. The protests erupted in ferocious violence. The Coalition responded in kind. Now every Iraqi Shiite killed only fuels the cult of martyrdom.
Which is why, for the moment, the Americans would be wise to deal with al-Sadr, if he leaves any room for talk at all. Each side has flexed its muscles. Now his fall-back to Najaf suggests he’s under pressure from older, wiser clerics. They don’t want the civil war he’s hoping to provoke, but the Coalition could push the country into one by overplaying its military might.
The United States needs to buy some time right now, and it can. The transfer of sovereignty on June 30 is a symbolic moment, not a substantive one. The occupation, as a U.S. diplomatic and military presence, is meant to last for many more years, and it’s going to be a long test of wills, yes, but also of wits. It makes no sense to race against your own clock.
