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[Mandark]

Short version is that the US got into another tussle with Moqtada Al-Sadr, a young, kinda angry cleric, and his supporters. Sadr was hanging out in a really holy shrine in Najaf, so the US didn't want to storm it directly, and the Sadrist forces are way too rag-tag to really push back trained US troops.

A bunch of Shiia delegates to the Iraqi democracy convention protested against military action in Najaf, so the interim government (run by Iyad Allawi) said okay, we'll try to negotiate with him instead. But nothing was really settled and the fighting between the Sadrists and the US kept on going.

So after a week or two of this, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani (the grand poobah of Iraqi Shiism) flies back from the UK, where he was having an operation, calls for a big pillgrimage to save Najaf, gets it, then negotiates a settlement. Sadr will get out of Najaf, and the US will stop shooting things and not plan to kill Sadr later.

Anyway, Sistani rules, Sadr wants to get into politics, and the discussion back here seems to have been hijacked by the Swiftvets. Kinda important stuff. Thought the board should have a topic.

 

[Azih]

Sadr just keeps getting what he wants again and again. Why oh why does the coalition keep on walking into his OBVIOUS traps?

 

[Socreges]

http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/4956552.html

Though a similar possibility was realized over a week ago, and fighting continued, this seems more legitimate.

But I really don't think giving Sadr an opposing party is going to remove the threat altogether, as they suggest.

 

[Azih]

Yeah. It's too bad though, if Sadr had been ignored he would have been a minor political force, now he's going to be a major player.

Gah, bending over backwards to get on Sistani's good side would have taken care of this months ago.

 

[Ripclawe]

Sistani has always been recognized as the major power in Iraq since Saddam fell, It was interesting to find out that when Sistani left, so did the other senior clerics and then the armed forces started to take Sadr's "army". Sistani comes back and boosts himself as an even bigger power in the region.

if Sadr had been ignored he would have been a minor political force

That is what got everyone in trouble, they ignored him when they shouldn't have late last year when people were warning them he was building up to do something. He built up this "army" made of the followers who think he is as upstanding as his father was and common criminals looking for an excuse to rob.

Sistani is not crazy, pretty moderate and wants nothing to do with Iran who tried to get on his good side in the hospital. As long as we don't trouble him, he doesn't trouble anyone else.

 

[Azih]

Wait, first paragraph you imply that Sistani was a part of a conspiracy to boost his own popularity and the last paragraph you turn positive? And Sistani's stature hasn't grown at all from this, it's exactly where it was before.

Look, the more Sadr was attacked by the Coalition the greater his stature grew. This is basic guriella politics and I'm shocked that the Coalition kept on giving him exactly what he wanted. Leaving him alone would have been *FAR* better than attacking him at any point. If the Coalition had attacked him a year ago as you suggest then the same thing that happened this time (people rally to Sadr's side) would have happened back then with the added problem that non American coalition forces which were responsible for patrolling the peaceful Shiite regions would have found themselves with unrest while the Americans took care of the Saddam loyalist resistance (mostly in the Sunni triangle). Hell this is what happened back when Bremer answered all of Sadr's prayers and shut his newspaper down earlier this year. What the Coalition *should* have done a year ago was get on Sistani's good side and nullify Sadr's effect.

The Coalition was *blessed* by the fact that the Shiite people had kept their collective heads and revered the calm and peaceful Sistani even though the horrors they faced would have justified their turning to the crazed firebrand rhetoric of Sadr. But they completely failed to take advantage of this blessing and through their incompetence are faced with a situation where Sadr is more of a force now then he ever should have been.

 

[Mandark]

Sistani wasn't recognized for the power he is immediately, at least not by the CPA (whatever it was called that first month; can't remember) or by stateside media. It wasn't until his fatwa on democracy impeded US plans that he started figuring in US plans and making headlines in US papers.

Generally, there didn't seem to be a really good process for figuring out who the players were in Iraq. It was obviously a hard job, but the expedition wasn't exactly overstocked with Arabists who could have helped, and there was a line of thinking that the US could decide who the players would be, and deal with them.

Sadr probably couldn't be ignored, though attacking him then backing away has been a worse choice. If the US had enough troops in Baghdad early on, they could have spread the word that the Army runs this block, and eastern Baghdad might not have turned into Sadr City.

But as soon as that had happened, and Sadr had armed supporters and practical authority to go along with his name brand value, it was inevitable that he'd be a player. The question was how influential he'd be, and whether he'd participate in the US-mediated/controlled political process, or set himself up as a parallel authority and not recognize any US-affiliated legitimacy.

At that point, the US had to calculate which one was more likely, whether it wanted him in the political process at all, and if not, whether it would be possible to capture and/or kill him without creating a bigger problem. Assuming that the moral/ethical issues of killing for political reasons are put aside; pretty much every important person in Iraq has enough blood on their hands to justify arrest (which in turn justifies "shot while resisting arrest").

Sadr and Sistani are both Iraqi nationalists, in that they don't want Iran putting its finger in the pie, or the Kurds leaving the union. Sadr likes Khomeneism and Sistani was born in Iran, but both of them are definitely homegrown in their support, and their goals focus on Iraq as it is currently drawn on the map.

The US government screwed up several steps of this process, and I still don't see any kind of decent endgame for the Sunni section of Iraq, and the Kurds sure don't love Sistani, but right now, he looks like the best option out there.

 

[DrLazy]

Sistani! We can't have a religious leader as head of Iraq, it's against our constitut... ahem, it's against Iraq's constitution. Or it will be.

And what about Chalabi! Wait no not him, I mean... er... Allawi! The interim puppet... excuse me... interim president. I'm sure Iraq will grow to love him, and reelect him for his awesome authenticity and put him on the Iraqi $1 bill as a true war hero and founder of the colony... excuse me, country, founder of the country.