Today, exactly a year ago, Saddam Hussein’s statue was brought down in Baghdad. Were the running battles last week with Occupation Forces in ‘Sadr City’ and other Shia enclaves a build up to that anniversary? The disturbances left at least 50 Iraqis and a dozen US and Spanish soldiers dead. Were the Shia mobs, under Muqtada al Sadr, reminding the invaders the favour they did to them on April 9, 2003? The events of Black Sunday further complicate an already complex situation: They open up a front with the Shias at a time when the Occupation Forces are sealing off Fallujah, the epicentre of resistance in what is described as the Sunni triangle. Sources in Baghdad with links in Fallujah were fearing a major crackdown to quell an otherwise uncontrollable insurgency. The opening of the Shia front has two consequences: It divides the attention of US military preparing for the Fallujah operation. Also, it distracts world attention from that crackdown. Shias, who are at least 65 per cent of Iraq’s population, have been as anxious as the Sunnis and the Kurds about the country’s future, but their senior ayatollahs have been advising restraint. Sunday’s rioting in the Shia enclaves is actually a milestone in the political career of a relatively junior cleric, Muqtada al Sadr. Only 32, he is a member of a respected religious family from Najaf, which was the most important seat of Shia learning until the ’70s. Saddam Hussein’s stranglehold on the state marginalised all religious activity, including Shiaism. At the same time, the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 brought the Shia clergy to power in Tehran. These simultaneous developments led automatically to the decline of the seminaries in Najaf. Now, of course, Najaf is reclaiming some of its original importance. During one of Saddam Hussein’s crackdowns, Ayatollah Baqar al Sadr and his sister were killed and the madrassas and other institutions left behind by the family fell into neglect. Muqtada al Sadr is a member of this family. After the 1992 crackdown in Karbala and Najaf, lakhs of Shias from southern Iraq were settled on the outskirts of Baghdad. Saddam Hussein named this extended Shia ghetto ‘Saddam City’. Then came the US invasion. The war lasted rather longer than Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld expected. Militarily, of course, the US had won but there was one problem: How does a victorious force project victory internationally? It had to be a mega TV event. Choreographers in Washington worked hard to produce a solution. The statue of Saddam Hussein on Firdaus Square, facing the Sheraton and Palestine hotels where the world media was headquartered, had to be pulled down under the full glare of TV cameras. Almost simultaneously, Dick Cheney appeared live on TV, spelling out the future trajectory of US military might and defining the frontiers of freedom worldwide. Do read Cheney’s speech of April 9 on the net to get the drift of the Iraq script. But this choreography was incomplete. Yes, Saddam Hussein’s statue had been pulled down but where were the crowds celebrating the “fall of Saddam”? That key element was missing. TV cameras then brought us images of crowds defiling Saddam Hussein’s images, hurling shoes at posters, spitting on him. This was not happening all over Iraq. These were images from Saddam City. Word had come through the Shia mosques in Saddam City that Saddam was gone. So the image the world had of crowds celebrating Saddam Hussein’s departure and, therefore, the American arrival would not have been possible without some of the Shia clergy encouraging the crowds on the streets. A few weeks later Saddam City was renamed Sadr City. It became clear which of the Shia clergy had helped manufacture this image. And now Sadr City is rioting against the Americans. Why? Because Muqtada al Sadr is eager to create a constituency. He knows he does not have the stature of Grand Ayatollah Sistani. But he, being young and nimble, moved into Saddam City and renamed it Sadr City. Ahead of other clerics, he also occupied the mosque in Kufa, 10 km from Najaf (extremely important because this is where Hazrat Ali was martyred). It was from here that his fiery sermons are delivered on Fridays. He is not in the Governing Council. He is not an ayatollah. Whatever he is doing does not carry the sanction of the ayatollahs. He is pressing the accelerator to create political space for himself. The ayatollahs know the Americans are not leaving in a hurry. They, like their ultimate mentor, Ali, would like to endorse a line of patience. The ayatollahs have a strategy for the eventual outcome. Muqtada al Sadr has a tactic, suited to the volatile situation, to be noticed politically and noticed now. Which of the two would the Americans play to their advantage?: An impatient young cleric with a capacity to bring out the mobs, or the dour ayatollahs, whose writ runs for millions of Muslims.
