Sadr treed Sistani

By Fester

The cat herder Grand Ayatollah Sistani has been treed by one of his cats according to initial reports from CNN.  Moqutada Sadr's offer to reign in/disband his militia on the condition that the senior Shi'ite religious leadership ordered it was a nasty, effective and Machiavellian piece of work.  Sistani could either ordered the Mahdi Army to disband and thus hang the Maliki government around his neck and thus de-legitimatizing his moral/political authority in the eyes of Sadr supporters just as Sadr finishes up his studies to advance in theological rank OR Sistani balks at the blatantly political move by Maliki and re-legitimatizes Sadr and the JAM/Mahdi Army as first among equals in the Intra-Shia scrum. 

Sistani blinked according to initial reports:

Iraq's top Shiite religious leaders have told anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr not to disband his Mehdi Army, an al-Sadr spokesman said Monday amid fresh fighting in the militia's Baghdad strongholds....

But al-Sadr spokesman Salah al-Obeidi said al-Sadr has consulted with Iraq's Shiite clerical leadership "and they refused that." He did not provide details of the talks.

The Mehdi Army has borne the brunt of an Iraqi government crackdown on what Iraqi and U.S. officials call "outlaw" militias in the past two weeks. The government's effort to reclaim control of the southern city of Basra in late March sparked clashes across southern Iraq and into Baghdad, leaving more than 700 dead, according to U.N. agencies.

Al-Sadr's followers have accused the government, which is dominated by al-Sadr's leading rivals, of trying to cripple their movement before provincial elections in October.

Sistani's great fear is that the internal divisions within the majority Shi'ite community could/would be exploited in a classic divide and conquer routine to keep his people out of power.  This is what happened in 1920, and it dominates his actions and option space shaping.  Since this is a blatantly political divide and conquer move by Maliki to fracture the pan-Shi'ite coalition that Sistani wants be either marginalizing or destroying the Sadrist current, this is entirely predictable. 

Furthermore as Juan Cole points out, this is a standard tactic of legitimatizing behavior combined with political hot potato:

the US press went wild for this supposed report that Muqtada al-Sadr said he would dissolve his militia if Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani ordered it. Folks, he always says that when there is a controversy. (He said the same thing in spring, 2004). He says it because he knows it makes him look reasonable to the Shiite public. He says it because he knows that the grand ayatollahs are not going to touch the matter with a ten foot pole. They are not so foolish as to take responsibility for dissolving a militia that they had nothing to do with creating. And that is probably the real meaning of this CNN report that they 'refused' when asked. I doubt the grand ayatollahs in Najaf actively commanded Muqtada to keep his militia. They just declined to get drawn in.

Cole has some fun at the local idiots who are convinced that Saddam's WMDs are in Syria, victory is around the corner, the Iraqi Army is standing up, the Badr Brigade is no more, and tax cuts pay for themselves:

So let us get this straight. Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fought off thousands of regular Iraqi army troops in Basra and Baghdad, and perhaps thousands of those troops deserted rather than fight. So the Mahdi Army won big and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki lost. Also the US military trainers of the Iraqi troops lost face.

So the next thing we hear is that al-Maliki is talking big and demanding that the Mahdi Army be dissolved. Usually you get to talk big if you win the military battle, not if you lose.....

So the idea that, having lost militarily, al-Maliki and his political allies (who are a minority in parliament now) could just a couple of days later jawbone Muqtada into giving up his paramilitary was always absurd.....

Comments

[Eric Martin]

Good stuff Fester.