IRAQ: Dealing with This Man Called Sadr

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peyman Pejman

BAGHDAD, Aug 19 2004 (IPS) - The failed efforts of the U.S.-backed Iraqi government to reach a peace deal with Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr has raised questions what can or should be done next to confront his armed movement.

Sadr and his Mehdi army have battled Iraqi and U.S. security forces for months. The fighting has led to thousands of casualties, including hundreds killed. Many have fled the fighting zone in Najaf to seek refuge in other cities.

Concern has risen also that the fighting could damage the golden-domed Imam Ali shrine, one of the holiest for Shia Muslims.

An eight-member government delegation sent Tuesday to meet Sadr was kept waiting hours. The members returned to Baghdad empty-handed.

Cleric Hussein Sadr, a distant relative of Moqtada Sadr who led the delegation tried to put a positive face on the trip.

“The rumors and press reports that the delegation failed in its mission are utterly untrue,” he told reporters after returning Wednesday. “The reports were mistaken because they portrayed the mission of the delegation as negotiating with Moqtada Sadr. Our mission was only to pass on a message.”

The delegation had gone to Najaf to demand that Sadr withdraw his armed men from the Imam Ali shrine, agree to a ceasefire with U.S. and Iraqi security forces, and disband his Mehdi army.

In return, the delegation carried guarantees from the government of appointed prime minister Iyad Allawi that Sadr would not be arrested under a warrant for him over the murder of a rival Shia cleric.

Sadr’s advisors had declared earlier they would welcome the government delegation, but did not say whether their leader would meet its members.

Later Wednesday there were reports that Sadr had written to delegates at a national conference convened in Baghdad to say that he was willing to meet government demands. But many Iraqi and U.S. officials say Sadr cannot be trusted because he has not kept past promises.

Some Iraqi leaders believe the government and independent groups have done enough to bring Sadr into what they see as the mainstream.

“With all the efforts going on, it is for him to respond to the efforts made,” Samir Sumeidi, interior minister in the former governing council said in a statement.

Others argue there can be no military solution to dealing with Sadr. Two rounds of conflict between Sadr and government forces over the last six months have brought no solution. Many of Sadr’s armed men have now taken refuge inside the Najaf shrine, and stored guns and ammunition in it. A military offensive would be likely to damage the shrine.

The mostly Christian U.S. forces would face religious sanction against entering the shrine. And few believe that Iraqi government forces would be up to such a task.

“I believe the only solution is to talk to Sadr,” says Hamed Kefai, former governing council spokesman. “He clearly has a lot of followers and we cannot turn our cities into battlefields.”

But he acknowledges that Sadr has been instigating unrest in many parts of the country and that it was becoming impossible to start a political dialogue with him.

Outside Najaf, Sadr has large support in the impoverished Baghdad suburb Sadr City, home to more than a million Shias.

U.S. and Iraqi officials say Sadr’s gunmen have also been involved in the fighting in Falluja, a mainly Sunni town northeast of Baghdad known to be a hotbed of Saddam supporters.

Officials accuse Sadr of forming an alliance with Iranian agents. Iran and Iraq fought a bloody eight-year battle in the 1980s, and an Iraqi official has declared Iran “enemy number one.” Iran has sent agents to destabilise Iraq, officials say.

One Iraqi leader says the real problem is not Sadr but the underlying socio-economic problems of the poor where he draws most of his support.

“When we have people in Iraq who have no electricity, who have no jobs, who are not sure if the political atmosphere in the country is free and fair, some tend to resort to extremist religious beliefs and acts,” says Mithal Allusi of the Iraqi National Congress, one of Iraq’s major political parties.

“The solution should be to find something that addresses the needs of the Iraqi people, something they can feel, something they can understand, and something they can agree with,” he says.