Speaking to his followers, he called for rapprochement between political and religious forces, saying: "Let us shake hands, and I want nothing from you. Is it not enough that in our division and arguments there is a service to the enemy?" - Moqtada al-Sadr, November 2006
"The occupation in itself is a problem. Iraq not being independent is the problem. And the other problems stem from that - from sectarianism to civil war. The entire American presence causes this." - Moqtada al-Sadr, July 2005
Obviously George Bush is not about to take the path to peace anytime soon. (Well, unless it is forced on the U.S. at gunpoint). However, it is useful to know there actually is one, though admittedly a radical one. From the asiatimes.com tea leaves I read, one do-able option for the U.S. is to facilitate (or at least not stand in the way of) an accord among the resistance that is (still) Iraqi nationalist in character, with these forces then more or less taking control of Iraq.
These nationalist forces ...
...are many, and of course include the Baathists, but from what I can gather they also include Moqtada al-Sadr, which is critical. One indication is his advocacy of restraint and against sectarian violence, which is long-standing and explicit. The first quote above is from yesterday’s Asia Times. Here is more from that source:
Speaking on the seventh anniversary of his father's martyrdom, Muqtada said: "If the late Sadr had been among you, he would have said, 'Preserve your unity. Don't carry out any act before you ask the hawza [Shi'ite seminary in Najaf]. Be the ones who are unjustly treated and not the ones who treat others unjustly.'"
However, despite this,
For the first time since his name began to shine, Muqtada's "wise" words fell on deaf ears. Over the past week, in response to the massive sectarian attacks on the Shi'ite enclave, Sadr City, in Baghdad - and despite Muqtada's calls for calm - armed Shi'ite groups stormed the offices of the AMS and the Sunni shrine Abu Hanifa, damaging them extensively. One group invaded the Huriyya district of Baghdad, burning four Sunni mosques, killing 30 people and wounding 48. Six of those killed were burned alive with gasoline as they left the mosque on Friday.
Such bloody reprisals demonstrate how the independent-minded reality of the Shiite resistance and Sadrist militias (See also Speaking of Iran below) make it easy to (deliberately) misunderstand al-Sadr. My impression is that what and who al-Sadr ‘controls’ at any moment rises and falls, depending on how close his stands are to those of the ‘street’. When he speaks for restraint just after Shiites have been massacred, his influence temporarily and dramatically wanes, though I don't believe this is a sign of anything permanent. However, obviously al-Sadr cannot call for restraint forever.
So al-Sadr pays a price for calling for restraint, as he probably was well aware, of loosened control over the Arab Shiite populace of Iraq. Yet he can still rely on his status as an ‘iconic’ stature leader defiant of the U.S., the son of a greatest recent Shiite religious leader, and inevitably also as the leader of the strongest militia fighting for and defending Shiite interests in central Iraq. And so he will be, writes Ehsan Ahrari:
As Iraq sinks deeper into civil war, Muqtada's political clout rises. If the US is to stabilize Iraq, it will have to convince Muqtada that its forces are leaving the country - and soon. Bush, though, is not interested in taking any measures that smacks of retreat. That is the proverbial rub, because Muqtada won't accept anything short of American withdrawal as the price for creating even a semblance of cooperation in stabilizing the country.
Realism, by the way, dictates that breaking up the country into three to five (warring) mini-states is not the path to a peaceful Iraq, and such an attempt will cause civil war more than anything else. Most importantly, and despite the idea’s popularity among Americans, the Kurds, and some Shiites, none of Iraq’s neighbors (Turkey, Syria, Iran***, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia) want it to happen, and all of them will do what it takes to make sure it does not.
I don’t, of course, include Israel among Iraq’s neighbors, but Israel’s interests do coincide with breaking Iraq into much less powerful and much more unstable (warring) and manipulable mini-states. And Israel does have Bush’s ear among many American others... So, see my first sentence above...
And, as I said, the intentions of the Bush administration may be much more along the following lines, writes Pepe Escobar:
As for the helpless Maliki... his days in power may be numbered. According to various and persistent reports, including from Western and Arab networks, a coup d'etat may be in the works in Baghdad: the US in the Green Zone may have enlisted four of Saddam's Sunni Arab generals with the mission of toppling the Shi'ite-majority Maliki government to install a regime of "national salvation". It would then restructure the Shi'ite-dominated ministries of Defense and Interior and finish off Shi'ite militias such as the Badr Organization of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Mehdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr.
One thing attention-getting for me about Escobar’s forecast is the inclusion of Baathist generals in U.S. plans. So, the U.S. is already making nice with that side of Iraqi nationalism. This makes the next logical step so much easier: a true ‘Iraqi national accord’ with al-Sadr. What such an accord would consist of is not that hard to imagine (though a little beyond this diary's scope): a distribution of power based on population numbers, an 'Islamic' government (with primacy of place to the Shiites) but with various kinds of strong regional and religious autonomy. Evenly shared oil wealth.
But instead the plan is apparently to do the impossible, defeat the Shiite militias. Oh well. Eventually, perhaps soon, U.S. policymakers may be forced to wake up to the new realities. Ahrari writes:
Yet the tide is turning, and unless the US takes some of these hard choices, the Middle East will be reshaped by the likes of Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah and Muqtada.
***Speaking of Iran, Escobar adds the following essential thoughts:
A web of myth continues to be spun by much of the world's press, according to which Iran, as an overpowering entity, uses the US occupation to crush the Sunni Arab resistance while manipulating Shi'ite militias. This is a two-pronged fallacy. The Pentagon's finest in Iraq are not crushing anything - on the contrary. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has all but installed an Islamic emirate in al-Anbar province, while the Mehdi Army reigns in Kufa, south of Baghdad, and in Sadr City in Baghdad itself.
The 10,000-strong Badr Organization - affiliated with SCIRI - may have been trained by the Revolutionary Guards in Iran, but it does not take any orders from Tehran. As for Muqtada's 7,000-strong Mehdi Army, it is split into at least three different factions (two of them don't even respond to Muqtada anymore). But all of them are opposed to Iranian interference.