About 10 000 young men have come forward to join an ”Islamic army” in the holy city of Najaf, according to Muqtada al-Sadr, the fiery cleric who is trying to become the unchallengeable leader of Iraq’s Shia opposition.
Sadr has denounced the country’s United States-appointed governing council as a puppet. Opposition to the Americans in the Shia south remains largely peaceful, although volatile, but hints of potential trouble are growing.
Few cities welcomed the fall of Saddam Hussein more enthusiastically than Najaf, and few of its powerful clerical dynasties were more delighted than the Sadrs — Saddam Hussein had killed two of their ayatollahs.
In the narrow alleyways of the bazaar where virtually every woman wears a long black coat and headdress, scores of shops sell posters of the murdered ayatollahs, along with pictures of Iran’s former leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who spent years in exile in Najaf. The city makes much of its money from visitors who pray at the burial shrine of Imam Ali, the founder of the Shia branch of Islam, or bring the bodies of dead relatives for interment in Najaf’s holy ground.
It is in this devout environment that Muqtada al-Sadr (30) is taking advantage of the reputation of his father, Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, who was killed in 1999 along with one of Sadr’s older brothers.
Sadr has been putting pressure on the Americans, using the Shia tradition of mass demonstrations, of the kind that helped to bring down the Shah of Iran in 1979. In a recent sermon, held in the nearby mosque of Kufa, he urged volunteers to come forward and join an Islamic army. He called it the ”army of al-Mahdi”, the so-called ”hidden imam” who disappeared in 874AD and is expected to return one day, like a Messiah, to save the world.
In the following week’s sermon, according to Sadr’s spokesperson, Sheikh Aws al-Khafaji, the cleric was able to thank the 10 000 volunteers who had come forward.
Exactly what kind of force Sadr has in mind remains obscure, since he is wary of courting arrest by US forces.
”I can’t say what weapons the army will have,” Khafaji said. ”It will not fight with sticks, and it is not just a large crowd of protesters. It is an army.”
As a crowd of young men, many in Shia turbans, milled about in an anteroom, the spokesperson added: ”Muqtada wants them to get out of the cities, but not out of Iraq now. Having troops in the cities frightens people. For the time being Muqtada is not considering calling for jihad against the US occupation. We want to prove we are peaceful if they are peaceful.”
Najaf’s more senior clerics have kept quiet about Sadr’s activities, apparently out of respect for his father but perhaps also to avoid jeopardising their authority among the younger generation, which provides most of Sadr’s following.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani upholds the dominant Shia tradition of staying aloof from politics, although he issued a fatwa a month ago saying Iraq’s new Constitution had to be written by Iraqis who had been chosen by other Iraqis, rather than by the Americans. Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim, who led an armed opposition group against Saddam from exile in Iran, has authorised his representative to join the country’s new governing council.
But the Sadr family itself is split. Ayatollah Hussein al-Sadr, Sadr’s second cousin, supports the governing council, although he turned down an invitation to join it.
Declining to criticise Sadr, he said: ”Now the regime has gone we see a lot of street demonstrations, some positive, some negative.” In the nearest he would come to disagreeing with his radical relative, he added: ”It’s up to the government to form an army.”
At the US marine base on the edge of Najaf, Colonel Christopher Conlin said Sadr was ”an immature kid, manipulated by others”. He pointed out that there have been no fatal attacks on US troops in Najaf or any cities in the Shia south. He is also happy that the protests that racked Najaf last week have died down.
Nearly two weeks ago, several thousand people gathered in the city in response to a call from Sadr on local TV claiming the Americans had surrounded his house and were about to arrest him.
Conlin said there had been more US troops on the streets only because of an unannounced visit by the US Deputy Secretary of State for Defence, Paul Wolfowitz. He subsequently sacked the TV director for incitement and broadcasting untruths.
Conlin said many people who attended protests last week were from the poor and largely Shia areas of Baghdad where Sadr’s father set up extensive mosque-based welfare systems in the 1990s, as Iraq was suffering from sanctions. They also included Sunnis bussed in from Falluja, Mosul and Tikrit.
Sadr’s murky relationship with Iran is also causing the US concern. He was given a high-level welcome in Tehran three weeks ago, although the Iranian authorities say they are trying to restrain him.
In the streets around the Imam Ali shrine, opinions of Sadr are divided. Some deplore the splits in the Shia community.
”Most demonstrators are not from here,” said Thu-al-fiqar Mohammed, who runs a cellphone shop. ”They see we have stability and order and are just trying to sow confusion.”
”We want security, water and power,” said Nuri Khadum, who was selling worrybeads from a handcart. ”We don’t want division. We want one Islam.” — Â