Radical, anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has pledged to support the new interim government in a sermon on Friday.

I was optimistic when I read this, too, but another way to read it is that it is a conditional -- that is, if the interim government throws out the Americans, Sadr will support it. Still, it's better than calling for all out jihad, no doubt.

I believe al-Sadr has indeed lost control of certain bands of his "militia" and his rhetoric supporting the government is in some way to distance himself from their felonious actions. At the same time, al-Sadr is wanting to play in Iraqi politics and can't be seen as a complete brigand in the eyes of the average joe.

I agree his support is conditional. Being anti-American is popular - you can't erase years of anti-western teachings with something as small as a liberation.

I believe al-Sadr has indeed lost control of certain bands of his "militia" and his rhetoric supporting the government is in some way to distance himself from their felonious actions. At the same time, al-Sadr is wanting to play in Iraqi politics and can't be seen as a complete brigand in the eyes of the average joe.

I agree his support is conditional. Being anti-American is popular - you can't erase years of anti-western teachings with something as small as a liberation.

It is NOT better to have Sadr pledging conditional support for the interim gov't. This guy attempted to seize power, and killed lotsa people in the process. He has an arrest warrant for murder, issued by an Iraqi judge. This is merely a ploy to buy time, raise a new army, and try again, perhaps by other means, to seize power.

Far better for him to overextend himself again.

MG

Look, Sadr represents a large portion of Iraqi society -- poor Shi'ites. These are just slum kids with AKs, it seems to me. They won't suddenly "disappear" because we shove them out of the political process. Instead, they'll foment a lot of trouble. The best way to deal with them is to bring them under the tent. Once they have to start delivering for their constituents, Sadr's people will have to moderate their behavior and become responsible. It happened to AMAL in Lebanon and to the IRP in Tajikistan.

praktike:

These are just slum kids with AKs, it seems to me. They won't suddenly "disappear" because we shove them out of the political process. Instead, they'll foment a lot of trouble. The best way to deal with them is to bring them under the tent.

Please don't take this as argumentative since I certainly don't intend it that way. Let's use a U. S. comparison. Will the problem of street crime in Los Angeles go away if the Bloods and Crips (and the hundreds of other gangs there) are brought under the tent? What would "bringing them under the tent" mean? Is this the right comparison? Is there a better comparison? And what would "bringing them under the tent" mean in this context?

I think that is a good comparison.

One, because the problem will never fully go away. Two, because, yes, there are option that can do a lot to defuse tensions and so forth. I'm by no means up on the literature of gangs, but basically my understanding is that giving people a shot at a real future is good, and negotiating cease-fires between gangs is also good. Merely locking up a bunch of gangbangers every now and again doesn't really get at the heart of the matter. People with good jobs don't join gangs.

praktike;

If I understand your response correctly, then you don't mean to "bring them under the tent" politically you mean economically. I agree completely. If it were politically then presumeably we'd be talking about giving them a seat on the City Council which would seem to me to be a very bad idea indeed.

Well, I guess I was blurring the distinction between the two cases here. Certainly, we don't have race riots here in Pittsburgh since the Civil Rights movement ensured that people living in Pittsburgh's Hill District have a representative on City Council, although there is still plenty of crime going on in that neighborhood, as well as myriad other social problems.

The point is that the constituency itself needs to be represented somehow. And in the case of the Sadrists, someone needs to be looking out for their interests in any sort of parliament, or they will continue to rebel in grand fashion. Given that patronage is likely to be the major way Iraqis get jobs, economic help to poor Shi'ites in Sadr city and the marsh areas is most likely to come from fellow poor Shi'ites in Sadr city and the marsh areas.

Pittsburgh also never had a serious streetgang problem. Betcha the current representative of the Hill isn't a former gang leader, either. I've been out of the 'Burgh for more than a decade now, but wasn't the Hill gentrifying, and the slums sliding eastwards through Oakland?

All that aside, yes, poor Shiites ought to have their own representatives. That's what local elections are for. Gang leaders, and Sayeed al Sadr in particular, are never democratically elected men of the people. If al Sadr agrees to stand for election in Sadr City from his jail cell, and is elected to office, then I might be willing to see him sprung as a tribune of the people. But into the jail cell he ought to go in the meantime.

Oh, BTW - that article about the First Armored heading home, and being replaced - it's getting replaced by two Marine expeditionary units in addition to that 10th Mountain brigade team. It's still a drawdown, but not nearly as significant a reduction - a net loss of an ACR and a division headquarters, if I read it correctly.

We still aren't talking about Iran very much. Sadr, of course, is clearly financed by the Mullahs so I'm not sure to what extent he representes a genuine voice fo "poor shi'ites." But, I guess the real point is that he could if he were to establish some distance from Tehran and were to devolop his constiuncy purely on the grounds of Iraqi Shi'ite grievances.

Is this what he's doing?

The value of "dissent" is somewhat undermined, in other words, by the fact that he doesn't seem to convincingly recognize the locus of dissent as the Iraqi state. I wonder if his current anemic expressions of support are designed to ellicit the impression that he's doing that, and if so, if they'll be successful? I'm glad we aren't in his position.

praktike:

Sadr's army is currently in ruins and his plans to seize control of southern Iraq have noticeably fizzled. That he is now supporting a government that he had previously denounced as an infidel puppet government should probably be taken as a sign that he's looking for a political future inside Iraq that doesn't involve his ass ending up in a jail cell and is probably hoping that he can use his hold over his followers to end violence in return for political legitimization.

As far as the Mahdi Army goes, it does represent the poor (or more specifically, the Sadr City poor) but they would never have been able to achieve the reach or sophistication that they did if not for all of the Iranian cash and training provided by VEVAK and people like Mughniyeh. Lebanon doesn't work as a model here because all of the major parties, Shi'ite or otherwise, have kiss the ring of the Syrian Baathists to continue to operate, otherwise they're destroyed. Unless the US is planning to set up a colonial administration in Iraq akin to what Damascus has in Lebanon, I don't think that the AMAL example works very well. As for the Tajik IRP, that peace treaty was only upheld through the work of a grand mufti who was amendable to both sides in the civil war, though the IRP still has ties to much more radical groups like the al-Qaeda affiliate IMU. Sistani might be willing to play the role of the Uzbek grand mufti in this particular scenario, but would Sadr listen to him? Perhaps at first, but judging from the words of various VEVAK defectors Sadr was set up to neutralize Sistani as a threat to Khamenei. This is one of the reasons why I'm of the opinion that the sooner he's put down the better.

I do think that you have some valid points as far as how to significantly lessen Sadr's recruiting base, but as long as his Iranian backers want Sistani neutralized or dead the same way that al-Khoei ended up we're probably going to see a repeat of April's antics all over again as soon as they think they can pull it off. Last time they were working on the Lebanon model and when that failed they had Sadr run back to An Najaf and Kufa while they reformulated their strategy.

At least part of what Iraq needs, at least IMO, is a respectable opposition, even an anti-American opposition, that doesn't resort to AK-47s or machetes whenever things don't work their way. One of the reasons that the Nazis and the Fascists were able to so readily take root in German and Italian society was the lack of respectable right-wing parties in either nation following World War 1. I'm pretty sure the lack of respectable left-wing parties in Latin America has likewise been a major factor in the rise of communism in South America. This is all just me talking out of my ass here, but I figure that by helping (tacitly) to create a kind of loyal Iraqi opposition combined with improving the lives of the Iraqi poor as well as ensuring the destruction of the Mahdi Army we can substantially diminish the recruiting base that Sadr or his Iranian backers have to work with.

Joel Gaines:

Most of the Iraqi anti-Americanism that was drummed into the heads of the general population under Saddam Hussein was the ultra-Arab nationalist variety rather than the theocratic velayet-e-faqih (Khomeinist) stuff that Sadr preaches. His father was assassinated for opposing Saddam Hussein, which is why Sadr is so popular. There's a big difference between hating America because it's an obstacle to the Revolution™ and the destiny of the glorious Arab race and quite another to regard America as a wholely satanic entity the way that Khomeini and his ideological descendants do.

MG:

Sadr is simply trying to survive at this point, but I'm kind of like Gimli at Isengard on this point - "Let's just have his head and be done with it." Bringing him into the government sends a very bad message for other Iraqi militia leaders of how to get power and influence with the America and one another if things fall through at the negotiating table, which is one of the reasons why I believe that we need to make an example of Muqtada and his jackboots, preferably by having the Iraqis do it for us. I'm sure the Thulfiqar Army would love to have some words with Sadr about desecrating their holy cities.

Dan:

I don't disagree. But I see them as less different than many. I might be wrong, this isn't my area of expertise. I have researched this a bit and I think I have used logic to reach my conclusion. Tell me what you think.

Pan-Arab nationalism since at least the end of WWII and US policies in the ME against Soviet control of the entire region gave the impression (whether just or not) that America was just another "western imperialist" nation.

This was generally not the feeling of the Arabs before WWII and certainly not in the 5 - 10 years after WWI. With the destruction of the Ottman Empire, in which the US had a part, independent Arab nations became possible for the first (?) time.

My view is the theocratic anti-west teachings evolved from general Pan- Arab nationalism, which saw the west as a threat. Especially with parts of the ME being occupied by Russians and British during WWII. The broad support, by the US for the creation and protection of the state of Israel would have contributed to a degraded view of the US in Arab eyes.

It appears to me Jihaddist organizations have been formed or formally recognized generally within a couple of years after a major combat event with Israel.

The fact that we tend to support Israel's right to continued existance must make us an enemy of Pan-Arabism in general, and the theocratic velayet-e-faqih is a natural progression of it.

Thoughts?

Dan, I'm not sure how you square your assertions about Sadr with the fact that SCIRI have been his main rivals, and they have probably received much greater backing from Iran, especially since they were in Iran for many years while Sadr was in Iraq. The Thulfiqar Army may well have been a SCIRI operation

praktike:

I'll answer in-depth tomorrow, but SCIRI is being backed by different elements of the Iranian government as opposed to Sadr. The struggle between the two of them mirrors the struggle between the moderate and hardline elements of the Iranian governments.

Thulfiqar Army isn't SCIRI either, though that didn't keep them from trying to claim credit for it.

praktike:

Sadiq al-Sadr and SCIRI - through Ayatollah Mohammed Sayed al-Hakim - maintained a close relationship until Sadr's death. It is only recently the Sadrist movement has attempted to remove Iranian shiite influences from interfering with the possibility of an Iraqi theocracy. Remember, the Iraqis have Najaf - some feel they are being cheated by not being the center, power wise, of the Shiite establishment.

The "split" between Sadrists and SCIRI today is mostly a result of Muqtada al-Sadr using the pulpit to complain about the lack of SCIRI interest in supporting his grab for power.

Muqtada al-Sadr wants to inherit his father's legacy and, while he enjoys a great deal of "tribal" (maybe a bad word here) support because his father is a martyr, he just isn't the Grand Ayatollah type. He's not especially bright, never completed his training (rumor) and is competing with the understanding by many of his would-be followers that "there is gold in them there hills". His father had the ability to galvinize followers against a common foe, without having to compete with potential material comfort.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my 2 cents. 3/4 of a penny when adjusted for inflation.

One extremely key issue is the future trial, or not, of Sadr for his role in the murder of the cleric last year.

This must be carried out by Iraqis. I'm not certain what the outcome will be -- I'm pretty sure there is less evidence against Sadr than, say, against OJ.

It's not clear that allowing Sadr some freedom of movement isn't a good diversion for his forces. Since he's now, as a murder suspect, fatally flawed, efforts spent for him as the "destabilizer" are not spent for his future replacement. In the meantime, Iraqi politics develops with him having some, small influence, but possibly no real future. (Like Chalabi?)

There still need to be more local elections, and the locally elected Iraqis need more budgetary authority.