Security

Sadr: Surrendering, or Playing Possum?

Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr “intends to disarm his once-dominant Mahdi Army militia and remake it as a social-services organization,” the Wall Street Journal reports. But is this a real shift — or umpteenth example of Sadr playing possum? No one knows, for sure. The Journal has its hands on a new Sadrist “brochure,” which […]

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Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr "intends to disarm his once-dominant Mahdi Army militia and remake it as a social-services organization," the Wall Street Journal reports. But is this a real shift – or umpteenth example of Sadr playing possum? No one knows, for sure.

The Journal has its hands on a new Sadrist "brochure," which "states that the Mahdi Army will now be guided by Shiite spirituality instead of anti-American militancy." Some folks say the announcement signals "crash and burn for the Mahdi army."

But Sadr has appeared to give up many times before, Spencer Ackerman notes. Like "standing down from the August 2004 Najaf battle; going to study in Iran; the August 2007 ceasefire." Which means there's "an alternative explanation" for that new brochure. It "would hold that Sadr is making yet another of his endless tactical retrenchments and is embedding his movement ever deeper within the fiber of Shiite Iraqi society, establishing an alternative infrastructure to Maliki's failed governance, and retaining his military option for future use. It's worked for him for five years now."

In recent fights in Basra and Baghdad, the Iraqi Army appeared to kick the Mahdi Army's collective rear (with some not-inconsiderable
American help). That ended what the Times of London alleges was a secret deal between British forces and the Mahdi Army in Iraq's second-largest city. The Iraqi government is now working to dismantle the "shadow state" that Sadr set up, to provide social services to the poor. Basra is slowly returning to some approximation of normality. All of which has made the "threat" from Sadr "significantly lower,"
Anthony Cordesman observes. But he warns that the Mahdi Army
"survived" those attacks "by dispersing and hiding their weapons. Most elements of the JAM [Jeysh al-Mahdi, the Iraqi name for the Sadr group]
that were involved in significant fighting managed to disengage from heavy fighting without having to disarm the Mahdi Army."

Much depends, therefore, on both the future of the Sadrist movement and the
Iraqi government’s success in winning sustained popular support from
Iraq’s Shi’ites.

If Sadr is excluded from Iraq’s political process, feels the process is unfair, or chooses to mix politics with violence, the JAM could again become a major threat.

[Photo: Globalsecurity.org]

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