IRAQ: Michael Jansenexamines why Iraq's radical Shia cleric has become a potent threat instead of a saviour
As American President George Bush meets Iraqi Shia leader Abdel Aziz Hakim today, Baghdad's kingmaker, Muqtada al-Sadr will be elsewhere, excluded from consultations on the country's future.
The populist Shia cleric, who has the largest following and largest bloc in parliament, might have become Iraq's new strongman if he had reined in his al-Mahdi army militiamen and espoused a programme for the new Iraq which Sunnis, secularists and Christians could accept.
But he cannot even convince their legislators to join his 32-member bloc's boycott of the assembly and government to protest premier Nuri al-Maliki's meeting last week with Bush. Sunnis and secularists are not prepared to join his camp because they consider him a loose cannon whose 20,000-50,000 fighters are endangering the existence of the country.
His black-clad Mahdi army militiamen and Sadrists - recruited into the security forces - have been kidnapping, torturing and killing secularists and Sunnis since February when al-Qaeda blew up a Shia shrine in Samarra.
Instead of curbing his militiamen, Sadr unleashed them to demonstrate to Shias that the Sadrists were their protectors. Although he secured the support of the Shia poor, his followers terrorised everyone else, including the Shia religious establishment, Shia middle and professional class, and other Shia factions in the government. Sadr is now more feared than was the ousted president, Saddam Hussein, at the peak of his powers.
If secularists, Sunnis and Sadrists could form a solid opposition front they could block the Kurd drive for independence under the guise of autonomy as well as the plan of Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) for the creation of a Shia autonomous region in the south.
All three call for a strong central government and reject the partition of the country, Kurdish annexation of Kirkuk and foreign meddling in its affairs.
But Sadr's modus operandi and ideology exclude partners from other factions. On a practical level, the feared Mahdi army is self-financing through racketeering, carjacking, protection and kidnapping.
He claims elements of his militia are out of control to distance himself from their cruel and unsavoury activities but he cannot dodge responsibility. Furthermore, his ministers have alienated many Iraqis by failing to deliver results in the agriculture, transport, public works and health ministries. The health ministry is not only mismanaged but preferential treatment is given to Shia area hospitals in doling out medications and equipment while facilities in Sunni areas are neglected.
On the ideological level, while he proclaims his independence from Tehran, he espouses vilayet-i-faqih, rule by the jurisprudent, the system by which Iran is governed.
The Shia establishment (which opposes a direct political role for clerics), Sunnis, secularists, Christians, Kurds, and other Shia fundamentalists do not want to place Iraq under a Shia clerical dictatorship. Sadr also preaches the imminent coming of the Mahdi, the saviour of the world - particularly of the Shias. This is a doctrine accepted only by his most devoted followers.
Finally, the rivalries between Sadr and other Shia groups has already erupted in violence on the streets of southern Iraqi cities. All-out intra-Shia warfare could very well be added to the violence of Iraq's ongoing anti-US insurgency and Sunni-Shia and Kurdish-Arab civil conflicts.