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Wayne White is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute. Previously, he served as deputy director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Analysis for the Near East, with a special focus on Iraq.Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr keeps losing ground and agreeing to shaky truces with U.S. and Iraqi forces, but it would be a terrible mistake to underestimate the power and influence he and his Mahdi Army militia wield. Sadr and the U.S.-backed Shiite president of Iraq are in a fierce power struggle, and Sadr has not just beaten back efforts to disarm and weaken his forces, but he also keeps making bids to increase his popular support. He has steadily maintained and built upon a solid base of poor Shiites in Iraq by offering protection and, more recently, basic needs, such as health care and education, that they are not receiving from the government.
As a result of those efforts, his staunch anti-Americanism and Sadr's longtime popularity with large segments of Iraqi Shiites, attempts by U.S. and Iraqi forces to tame Sadr and his militia in recent months are probably backfiring. "Clumsy U.S. counterinsurgency tactics in the early years of the Iraq War generated as many -- if not more -- insurgent recruits as those fighters killed or captured. Likewise, in the recent fighting in Sadr City, during which U.S. forces did much of the heavy lifting, numerous casualties among civilians and extensive property damage probably rallied many angry Shiites to Sadr's cause," writes Wayne White, a scholar with the Middle East Institute.
Sadr is often portrayed as an Iranian-backed troublemaker whom the Shiite-controlled government in Tehran is using to destabilize its neighbor and increase its influence there. But White argues that such a view is simplistic and dangerously misjudges the real source of his power: his strong support from a large segment of Iraqi Shiites. First, White says, rival Shiite groups with ties to the government have also received aid from Iran. More important, however, during the Iran-Iraq War, when many Shiite groups in Iraq decamped to Iran, Sadr and his father remained based in Iraq and persistently defied Saddam Hussein -- who had the elder Sadr assassinated. Sadr is revered not as a Shiite leader and spokesman, but as an Iraqi Shiite. "Moqtada al-Sadr also is his own man," White says. "In part for this very reason, Iran withheld support from him in 2003."
POSTED BY: Kent Webb (May 23, 2008 06:07 PM)
Go to Longwarjournal.com and read what the embedded milbloggers are saying about what they see on the ground and what they hear from the people on the ground and you get a much different picture than what this former State Department officer is saying.
Their take is that Sadr is declining in influence and prestige while Maliki is gaining in both. By the time the local elections come around, the government will have had time to deliver services and win support among the people. The militants and their Iranian allies ability to steal oil revenue etc. that they could use to buy support and fund militias has taken a huge hit when they lost control of Basra and its ports.
Also, the LWJ reports that the people in Bahgdad know that much of what was killing people in their areas was mortar and rocket fire from the Mahdi militia that missed its mark. This has created unhappiness with Sadr and his cohorts. Also the stories of oppression coming out of liberated Basra about how the mahdi thugs were murdering and stealing and raping is not doing their election prospects any good.
Sadr is in Iran and people have noticed that he is not with them in all their troubles. This alone makes him look like an Iranian stooge.
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