[Marxism] The Sadr regime in Baghdad's Shia community -- continuing challenge to occupation

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a long but extremely valuable article from Asia Times on the
regime in Baghdad's Sadr City and the Mehdi army headed by Moqtada
al-Sadr.  It shows, among other things, the breakdown of order -- with
no trace yet of a viable new imperialist order -- that has followed the
occupation, and what the people and leadership groups in some areas are
trying to do about it.

It also highlights the fact that if the regime coming out of the
elections allies with the occupation, they will have to back Washington
in breaking the power of the al-Sadr Shia forces in Baghdad -- a
full-scale war in the capital city.  Are Sistani and the Shia leadership
ready to pay the price of that operation?
Fred Feldman




http://www.atimes.com (full article)

The taming of Sadr City
By Michael Schwartz

Sadr City - the overcrowded, under-serviced 3 million-person Baghdad
slum that has been the site of some of the fiercest fighting in Iraq -
is the linchpin of the war.

Though there have been more spectacular battles in Fallujah and Najaf,
Sadr City is of paramount importance because it is the center of the
Shi'ite rebellion, and the Shi'ites represent 60% of the Iraqi
population. As a consequence, the Mehdi army - the military arm of the
Sadrist movement that has dominated the area's politics for the past
quarter century - has become the most important of all the insurgent
groups, and a close look how it operates in its home base yields some
startling conclusions about the trajectory of the struggle for control
of Iraq:
The Sadrists have developed an effective political-military strategy
aimed at converting Sadr City into a "liberated area", in the classic
guerrilla warfare model.
Their main military strategy is to expel the US from their domain; only
when they are under attack themselves do they venture outside Sadr City
to attack US bases or supply routes.
The al-Sadr organization is attempting to construct a coherent "dual"
government that replaces the central government and which administers
the usual set of public services - from traffic control to apprehending
street criminals - within limits set by their inability to coordinate
with a national government. This proto-government has been particularly
assiduous in addressing the number one problem of public order, street
crime, and has actually cooperated with the local police in this
campaign.
Mehdi soldiers - the guerrilla forces led by the Sadrists - though prone
to thuggery, are largely under the control of this dual government,
which is led by civilians - tribal leaders and Muslim clerics. The Mehdi
soldiers act as the police force within the community.
The Sadrists have been surprisingly successful in co-opting the Iraqi
police, by rewarding them for working on community issues and fighting
them when they participate in efforts to suppress the rebel
political-military structure. American military complaints about the
unreliability of their Iraqi trainees is actually a reflection of
successfully applied guerrilla policy.
The Sadrists have begun to enforce strict Islamist fundamentalism by
suppressing such "moral crimes" as liquor sales and prostitution. The
have utilized an ugly brand of vigilantism (firebombing, assaults and
even homicide) to remove moral criminals from the community.
The Sadrists, and parallel groups in other cities (notably Fallujah),
have publicly denounced the spectacular bombings perpetrated by various
terrorists groups, complaining about their negative impact on the lives
and livelihoods of Iraqi civilians and calling for an active alliance
with the Iraqi police in suppressing foreign jihadis and domestic
terrorists.
The organization in Sadr City is an echo of similar developments in
Sunni cities (with Fallujah as the center), and it may foreshadow
similar developments in the all-important Shi'ite south. The American
attacks on various Iraqi cities, including the brutal battle of
Fallujah, was an attempt to reverse this trend toward self-governed
cities into which American forces rarely intrude.
The existence of these dual governments in many cities rebuts American
claims that US withdrawal would result in chaos. Ironically, just the
reverse is true; US success in defeating the guerrillas would result in
chaos, whereas a guerrilla victory would bring greater stability (and
perhaps too strict an order) to the Iraqi cities.

To understand these non-intuitive conclusions, we begin with the two
battles, in Najaf, which converted Muqtada al-Sadr - a young cleric who
inherited the leadership of the Sadrist movement after his father and
uncle were martyred - from a rather obscure militant into the one of the
most visible and admired leaders in Iraqi society.

The battles in Najaf
Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi army were thrust into the center of Iraqi
politics by the two battles with American troops in Najaf in April and
August last year. In both battles, the US sought to recapture the Shrine
of the Imam Ali from the Mehdi army, and the battles were concentrated
in the historic cemetery near the shrine and the densely packed
residential and commercial district surrounding it. The second battle,
particularly, annihilated the neighborhood and inflicted irreparable
damage on the lives and livelihoods of the local residents. Dexter
Filkins of the NY Times (August 28, 2004) described it:
A scene of devastation. Hotels had crumbled into the street. Cars lay
blackened and twisted where they had been hit. Goats and donkeys lay
dead on the sidewalks. Pilgrims from out of town and locals coming from
home walked the streets agape, shaking their heads, stunned by the
devastation before them.
Both sides claimed victory in both battles, and each had good cause to
do so. But beneath this disagreement over outcomes lay a larger mystery
about why these decisive battles took place in Najaf. Since both sides
agreed (particularly in the second battle) that the US was determined to
deal a death blow to the Mehdi army, why weren't the attacks launched at
its principle base in Sadr City, particularly since the presence of the
sacred Shrine in Najaf made it much more difficult for the US to unleash
its most devastating offensive weapons.

The difference between the two settings lies in a simple fact: in Sadr
City, the Mehdi soldiers were protecting their home neighborhoods from
the ongoing US military incursions; in Najaf they were outsiders who had
entered the city for the precise purpose of protecting the shrine, and
had brought with them a ferocious battle with the US Marines that
devastated the city. The US Army chose to attack the militia in Najaf -
after experiencing frustration with attempts to assault Sadr City -
"because Sadr's ragtag militia doesn't enjoy local support". (Christian
Science Monitor, August 13, 2004)

While the Mehdi army could be seen as courageously defending Najaf from
US invasion (and this is exactly the view taken by many residents and
the vast majority of the international Shi'ite community); many local
residents and pilgrims felt that the militia could have prevented all
the carnage if they had never come to Najaf. Before the militia arrived,
there was almost no fighting, as demonstrated by the huge throngs of
pilgrims. During the Saddam Hussein regime, such pilgrimages had been
severely limited, and thus his demise resulted in a mini-economic boom
for local merchants.

Once the Mehdi army arrived and the fighting began, tourism died and the
lives and livelihood of innumerable citizens were destroyed. During the
first siege, the opinion of many was expressed by local cleric Sadr
al-Din al-Kubanchi, who told NY Times reporter Abdul Razzaq al-Saeidy
(April 24, 2004):
It's not brave to take refuge in the house or the mosque or the markets
and use women and children as human shields ... If that happens, the
[US] soldiers will attack Najaf and our enemies will happily see our
blood flow.
This sentiment was elaborated during the second battle by Abu Muhammed,
a pilgrim from Kut, who told Times reporter Filkins:
"I blame Muqtada al-Sadr for what happened here, and the Iraqi
government, too," said an old Iraqi man, identifying himself as Abu
Muhammad. "We, the simple people, are paying for their mistakes." Mr
Muhammad seemed to speak for many Iraqis here, who in dozens of
interviews over the last several days denounced not only Mr Sadr but the
Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, as well. With their homes and
businesses in ruins, it seemed for many Iraqis that most of Iraq's new
leaders had failed. "Look at all the damage," an Iraqi man said to a
friend as he walked down a street whose every building had been broken
and crushed. "Let God take revenge on the Americans for this."
Though their hatred for the US was undiminished, many residents and
pilgrims bitterly resented the presence of the Sadrist militia. In this
view, the Mehdi, no matter how well intentioned, had created a war that
killed many innocent civilians, destroyed a large part of a holy city,
and devastated the lives of a whole community.

Sadr City as a classic 'liberated area'
Things operated very differently Sadr City, where the Mehdi army was
integrated into local life. The Sadrist movement had erected a governing
structure that could viably lead the community, including a legislature
(made up of tribal leaders) and an executive branch made up of movement
activists (including key clerics), with the Mehdi army playing the role
of the police. For the near term, this incipient government had two key
tasks: to make Sadr City inaccessible to US troops (and whatever allies
it could muster among Iraqi armed forces); and to institute "law and
order" within its boundaries. These dual goals, if successfully
achieved, would offer Sadr City a semblance of a normal existence that
had been disrupted when the US toppled the Saddam regime. It could not,
of course, solve the larger economic and infrastructural problems that
were preventing the reconstruction and revival of Iraqi society; those
problems could only be addressed if and when the national government
stopped being a part of the problem.

Sadrist military strategy
Looking first at the relationship with the American army, we note that
the Mehdi army has adopted a distinctly defensive posture. Militia
members rarely attack American convoys outside Sadr City, nor do they
lob grenades into American bases located around Baghdad, two strategies
they used regularly during the Najaf battles. On the other hand, once
the Americans enter Sadr City, the Mehdi usually resist ferociously.
They are determined to carve out areas into which Americans are at least
hesitant to come, and, over time, make these areas more-or-less immune
to American incursions. This goal may be unreachable in the sense that
US military superiority will always allow it to mount an attack from the
air or to march through the community by massing a force of sufficient
size; but if the end result is that Americans come to Sadr City
infrequently and stay briefly, then the guerrillas will have won a
sufficient victory to proceed with their broader plans.

Phillip Robertson, writing in Salon.com, described how this strategy
played out in practice when he described the reaction of Sergeant Reggie
Butler (the ranking non-commissioned officer of the 1st Platoon of the
1st Cavalry) to orders that his unit patrol one of the areas in Sadr
City that the Mehdi were most determined to defend:
Butler instantly understood that the officers in the operations center
had given the 1st Platoon the worst patrol in the Shi'ite ghetto, a loop
around the entire northern side of the city. It was also a provocative
one. The Bradleys would go within blocks of the al-Hekma mosque, a place
where the Mehdi army has laid many ambushes and constantly fires at
American patrols.
During this patrol, there was no fighting because both sides stayed
within certain unspoken boundaries. The Americans did not attempt to
actively search for guerrillas, contenting themselves with a "snap
checkpoint", which involved "choking off traffic in both directions,
while Iraqi soldiers searched cars full of young men". The Mehdi
spotters, for their part, contented themselves with tracking the
progress of the patrol:
At each of the stops, someone fired a few shots from a rifle. "When you
hear that pop-pop from an AK, they are tracking you. That's how they
tell everybody where you are," a gunner explained. The invisible men
were watching us and holding their fire ... Three hours later, the
ceasefire hadn't collapsed and Butler's platoon had only had to endure a
hail of rocks thrown by Iraqi boys. They had trouble believing their
good luck.
But this "truce" was only situational. Several days earlier, a vicious
firefight had erupted. In this case, the patrol that invaded Sadr City
was intent on searching a residence that the Americans suspected was
being used to sell arms. Robertson described the events this way:
On a busy street in the middle of the day, the people and traffic
disappeared. Spotters for the Mehdi army had seen the Americans coming
in their convoy and signaled the fighters, who were ready to shoot from
alleys and rooftops. As the street cleared out, a heavy soldier named
Barron was yelling over to me in the back of the last Bradley ... "See
that? No people. That's bad." Seconds after he said it, the street
around the Humvees disappeared in clouds of dust where the Mehdi army
bullets hit the ground. The dust came up around the wheels. It looked
like the Humvees were sinking. The heavy guns on the vehicles shuddered.
Gunners standing up in the Humvees were returning fire, but it was hard
to see if they hit any of the Mehdi fighters who were trying to hit the
convoy. It was a gun battle on an empty street against invisible men ...
When we drove into the ambush, the 1st Cavalry soldiers were on their
way to meet the Iraqi police and search an arms dealer's house. As the
convoy arrived at the dealer's street, the four Iraqi police trucks
slowed down but didn't stop. The Iraqis were supposed to conduct the
search while the Americans provided security ... With the Iraqi police
missing and the locals firing rockets at the convoy, Alpha Company
abandoned the cordon-and-search and headed for the base at 50 miles an
hour, narrowly missing a roadside bomb.
There are three noteworthy elements to this event that speak to the
strategy of the Mehdi army in Sadr City. First, this incursion involved
the invasion of someone's home, one of the most provocative acts the US
routinely undertakes. The rules of engagement for such action call for
smashing the door (rather than giving the suspect a warning by knocking)
and extremely aggressive behavior inside; actions that are pregnant with
the possibility of greater violence, including death, if the residents
resist or act in a suspicious manner. Sadr City residents consider this
terrifying procedure a heinous attack on respected members of the
community. Because of notoriously faulty intelligence, the suspects are
usually not guilty of anything; but even if this suspect were an arms
dealer, his neighbors would not see this as a crime. After all, an arms
dealer supplies his neighbors with needed guns to resist crime or the
Americans. Because the resistance has spies within the Iraqi police,
they knew the destination of this mission; and were able to prevent an
American assault on a respected resident of the neighborhood; and to
create a deterrent against future house invasions. This sharply
contrasts with the actions in Najaf and Karbala, where the battles were
between militia members and US troops, both of whom did not live there.

Second, the conduct of the battle was designed to protect the guerrillas
from casualties. By occupying strategic places in the buildings above
the convoy, the Mehdi were able to fire at the American and Iraqi
soldiers while using the buildings to protect themselves from the
superior weaponry of the American troops. As Robertson put it, "It was a
gun battle on an empty street against invisible men." Typically, the
guerrillas sought to start and finish battles before gunships could
arrive, thus reducing the danger to themselves and to the buildings.
They could easily hide their guns and pose as civilians to escape
capture; a strategy that often did not work among the frequently
unsympathetic townspeople in Najaf. This posture of protectiveness to
the guerrilla cadre reflects classic guerrilla strategy, which seeks to
fight battles only when casualties can be limited. (It of course
completely precludes suicide attacks, a strategy that has not been
practiced by the Sadrists.)

Third, the community was forewarned about the impending action, and
given a chance to evacuate the area. Our attention is called to this by
Robertson's dramatic remark, "On a busy street in the middle of the day,
the people and traffic disappeared." They disappeared because of the
warnings issued by the guerrillas that a battle was brewing.

It is important to note that warning the civilians also warned the
Americans, since the quiet streets were a sign that the American 1st
Cavalry noticed and understood. The Mehdi army was therefore sacrificing
the element of surprise in order to reduce civilian casualties.

Evacuation of civilians from the battlefield is a central element in
winning a guerrilla war. High levels of civilian casualties alienate the
local population (even if they hate the invader). This sort of
consideration is part of the explanation for the almost unanimous
respect for Muqtada al-Sadr in Sadr City, His standing is indicated by
the following incident reported by Washington Post reporter Scott Wilson
during a patrol conducted by American and Iraqi troops (July 6, 2004):
A column of six US military vehicles and a flatbed truck carrying Iraqi
National Guard soldiers stopped in traffic next to an outdoor market. A
child emerged from the roadside stalls, carrying a cardboard poster of
Muqtada al-Sadr ... On tiptoes, the child handed the poster to the Iraqi
soldier manning a machine gun, as US soldiers watched in dismay. The
Iraqi soldier, part of a nascent security force trained and funded by
the United States, held Sadr's picture aloft for a gathering, cheering
mob ... "If we took it from them now, this whole place would explode,"
said Sgt Adam Brantley, 24, of Gulf Shores, Ala, watching from behind
the wheel of a Humvee.
The testimony of the American sergeant - that the community would
"explode" if they tampered with the display of the Sadr portrait - is
graphic evidence of the Sadrist base in this neighborhood (and most
neighborhoods in Sadr City). This military strategy contrasts sharply
with the orientation adopted by much of the Iraqi resistance. Many
groups try to undermine the viability of the occupation army by
attacking convoys and bases in order to inflict casualties, by fighting
sustained battles designed to use up huge amounts of the US's
ammunition; and by bombing supply convoys in order to deprive the
military of needed ordinance. This strategy intends to exhaust the army
and the American people by making the war expensive in every respect.
The Sadrist strategy abandons all these goals in favor of carving out
liberated areas free of American influence and - most particularly -
free of the havoc and destruction caused by the various activities of
the American armed forces. It involves withdrawing into Sadr City, not
engaging in battles or even demonstrations outside its confines, but
creating a strong deterrent against incursions by American armed forces.


Sadrist dual government
Insofar as this military strategy is successful, it enables the creation
of a viable governing structure. Knight Ridder reporter Tom Lasseter
described how this looks in practice (Houston Chronicle, July 17, 2004):

>From directing traffic to organizing blood drives, the militia overseen
by firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is taking control of Baghdad's
largest neighborhood, even as Iraqi and US officials demand that the
group disband. Al-Sadr's office, not the beleaguered police station, is
often the first stop for Sadr City residents who want to report a crime
in this teeming slum of 3 million. "Who runs Sadr City? Only the Mehdi
army," said Ali Qassim, who works in an ice cream shop off one of the
area's dusty boulevards ... On Tuesday morning, Iraqi police near
downtown Baghdad arrested at least 500 Iraqis in a roundup targeting
petty crooks and organized crime groups, but the sweep didn't extend to
Sadr City. To do so would require the Mehdi army's cooperation. "If
there is something wrong in this city, they will fix it," said Jasem
Jaber, an Iraqi policeman assigned to Sadr City ... Most residents
interviewed said the Mehdi army - named after the Shi'ite Muslim messiah
- doesn't need to carry weapons anymore because it's in charge.
Christian Parenti, in a thorough Nation article put it more bluntly:
If there is anything like "progress" in Iraq it takes place here, under
the radar, in the rubble of occupation. Sadr's followers, despite many
faults, including thuggishness and misogyny, are central to creating
what order there is in this ravaged ghetto.
This assertion of the Mehdi army as the backbone of law and order is not
a simple usurpation of power by an armed gang. The Sadrists, like most
successful guerrilla armies, are the enforcement arm of a politically
controlled revolutionary movement. Parenti provides a vivid snapshot of
how this larger structure operates in his description of the Sadrist
functionary in the al-Thawra district of Sadr City:
I try to meet Muqtada's local representative, a 29-year-old sheik named
Hassan Edhary, but he is on the run. The First Cav wants him, dead or
alive. His two predecessors are already in Abu Ghraib. A few weeks ago,
US tanks blew up this office. Reconstruction [of the office] started the
next day at dawn.
When Edhary arrived suddenly at his office later that week, he sounded
and acted very much like other politicians:
A stream of supplicants files through Edhary's little office, asking for
advice, money and letters. One lives in an IDP [internally displaced
people] camp and has no roof. Can the organization help? Edhary says, "I
don't have enough people to go investigate your claim. But if you can
find a religious sheik in your area to write a letter on your behalf,
then come back." A young doctor explains that a group of medical workers
has some money and wants to open a free or low-cost pharmacy to serve
the people. Can the office contribute some money? The sheik leans close
and plays with his string of black prayer beads as the young man talks.
Finally, he tells the doctor that Hussein, our hacker pal [and Parenti's
interpreter], can help the clinic with its computers. Hussein and the
doctor exchange numbers.
There are several interesting elements to this situation that help us to
understand ways in which guerrilla war is essentially connected to a
larger political structure:
Most visible is the fact that Edhary is the accepted political
authority. While such petitions could, in principle, be carried to the
US-appointed interim administration, in practice virtually all local
residents look only to the Sadrists.
Almost as visible is Edhary's extreme resource poverty. He is unable to
help a clearly worthy medical cause, except to provide donated computer
advice. This is a symptom both of the poverty of Sadr City and of the
fact that the guerrilla government has no sure means of accumulating
resources. (We should note, however, that they have by-and-large refused
to extort funds from the community through the coercive power of the
Mehdi - a mistake some Mehdi soldiers made in Najaf.)
Somewhat less visible is the rest of the governing structure. Edhary
refers the IDP resident to his local cleric, who must validate the claim
before he passes on it. This could easily be a temporizing action (like
so many other public officials), but it also reveals the existence of an
elaborate tribal and clerical structure that is the skeleton of the dual
government.

Though the resources are meager and Edhary's presence is made episodic
by his "wanted, dead or alive" status, the dual government is
nevertheless visible and accessible to the local community. As long as
his decisions are even-handed; as long as his authority is buttressed by
both the Mehdi army and by respected community leaders, and as long as
he can avoid the clutches of the Americans, Sheik Edhary will probably
retain legitimacy among his constituents - a legitimacy that is
aggressively withheld from the US and its appointed interim
administration.

Law and order in Sadr City
Sheik Edhary is one element in a much larger system of administration
headed by the Tribal Council, a legislative body made up of 28 members.
The council issued its most dramatic edict in June last year in response
to a year of problematic public order after the fall of Saddam. (Though
order was largely restored in the fall of 2003 after the Mehdi army was
formed, it became much worse when the US forces began their campaign to
eliminate the Mehdi).

The new edict, circulated by leaflet throughout Sadr City, sought to
reverse this trend with a comprehensive ban on a daunting range of
anti-social activities, all of them enforced by the Mehdi army and all
of them punishable by death. (NY Times, July 16, 2004) Among the
offenses were:
Street crime, notably hijacking (a favorite of street criminals who
resell stolen vehicles and/or the contents of stolen trucks), kidnapping
(a lucrative and widespread criminal activity targeted at prosperous
citizens, who pay as much as $50,000 to redeem family members), and
robbery (both from commercial sites and from individual homes). Street
crime is, by all measures, what most Iraqis consider to be the worst
problem of post-Saddam Iraq.
Political crimes, including both collaboration with the US government
and terrorist activities. The leaflet specifically mentioned members of
al-Qaeda, as well as locally bred Wahhabis and Saddam loyalists. (This
should not be construed as purely anti-Sunni; the Sadrists vocally and
physically supported the Sunni guerrillas in Fallujah and elsewhere.)
Moral crimes, including prostitution, pimping, pornography, gambling and
alcohol sales. These crimes reflect the deep streak of Islamist
fundamentalism that forms a core part of the Sadrist movement. There are
several noteworthy elements to this policy.

First, the list was circulated so broadly that even the American mass
media took notice of it. The broad circulation reflects confidence among
Sadrist leadership that the campaign would find favor with local
residents.

Second, the list of crimes, particularly the moral crimes like selling
liquor, was more than a little offensive to Western sensibilities. We
will address this issue at length below, but in this context we need to
point out that extreme hostility toward these moral crimes is organic to
the Sadr City community, and not something imposed from the outside.
While many Iraqis are secular and oppose such laws, the Sadr City
community is dominated by tribal leaders, clerics and citizens whose
fundamentalist version of Islam supports such bans (even if some or most
of them find the punishment excessive - see below). For most Sadr City
residents, therefore, the morality expressed in this leaflet was very
resonant; and it did not generate the revulsion experienced by most
Western observers.

Third, capital punishment for thievery is excessive at least, while it
is unimaginably brutal for gambling or selling liquor. The Sadrists
themselves preferred to use much less drastic (but often extremely
brutal) means of enforcing their new legal system; but as long as the
Americans controlled the larger political context, they had no way to
detain prisoners or punish them with normal judicial sanctions. Their
ability to threaten perpetrators therefore depended on punishment that
could be enforced without courts and jails. Most such punishments are
morally troubling. (More on this below.)

Fourth, for most residents of Sadr City the moral crimes were secondary
to the promise that the Mehdi army would act decisively against the most
pervasive problem faced by virtually everyone in Iraq: street crime. In
a survey conducted (ironically by the American interim government) at
about the same time, an overwhelming proportion of Baghdad residents had
listed personal safety as the most important problem they faced. Street
crime (like robbery, hijacking and kidnapping) was by far the most
important, IEDs (street bombs designed to destroy American Humvees and
tanks, but which all too frequently also injured or killed civilians)
were a distant second; and the American troops themselves (whose
reckless shooting whenever they chased guerrillas accounting for a
substantial proportion of civilian injuries) were a close third. (The
devastating use of gunships and bombers had not yet begun when this
survey was completed.) Mehdi's army was proposing to eliminate all
three: by arresting and/or executing street criminals, by driving out
al-Qaeda and other terrorists who were responsible for the IEDs in
heavily populated areas, and by keeping the American forces out of the
community.

The Sadrists and street crime
In the next few days, the Mehdi army proudly advertised the results of
its enforcement campaign, including the arrest of an organized ring of
thieves who had been stealing from a food warehouse that services the
local community. Rather than execute these thieves, they delivered them
to the Iraqi police, an option made available by their quasi-symbiotic
relations with formal law enforcement. (NY Times, July 17, 2004)

The complexity of the Mehdi policing function is illustrated by Sheik
Edhary's handling of a crisis that occurred while Michael Parenti was
observing his office hours:
Some sweaty Mehdi men rush in. They've just busted looters with four
stolen trucks full of sugar. It turns out the trucks belong to a
European [non-governmental organization] NGO, not the government or some
rich company. The sheik wants the vehicles and sugar returned, via the
police, to the NGO. "We have the trucks in storage. Can we turn them
over tomorrow?" asks the rotund Mehdi man in charge of the bust. He's
wearing a dirty football jersey. "I am your servant. I have given my
whole life to the religion, but I really cannot do this tonight." Edhary
leans away from the men at his desk and snaps taut a section of his
black prayer beads, then counts the little glass balls. He is "asking
God" for advice. An even bead count means yes; odd means no. "'No! No!
Absolutely not," the sheik bounces up from the desk, his outer black
robe slipping from one shoulder. He's addressing the sweaty man. "The
trucks must be returned tonight. If the trucks do not move now we will
be blamed. Either you do it now, or just go and don't do it at all. I
will find someone else." The sheik is electric with stress but
dignified. "I am your servant, as you wish," says the Mehdi guy, but he
looks pissed as he and his posse sweep out to deal with the trucks.
Much is revealed here:
This scene underscores civilian control over Mehdi's army. It
disconfirms the image of the Mehdi as undisciplined fanatics dictating
to a cowed civilian population. Instead, the Mehdi soldiers meekly
follow the orders of a religious/civil authority, much like normal urban
government operations.
[snip]

Sadrists and the terrorists
The Sadrists - and to a lesser extent, the Sunni leadership in Fallujah
- have attempted to dissociate themselves from resistance fighters who
utilize kidnapping, suicide bombers and other tactics designed to attack
the civilian base of the occupation. Though the official edict quoted
above listed al-Qaeda, Wahhabis and Saddamists as criminals subject to
the death penalty, other pronouncements indicate that the denunciation
extends to all "terrorists", both foreign and domestic. The Sadrist
opposition to terrorism rests on much more than philosophical grounds;
they view the terrorists as killing innocent civilians with bombings
that fail to drive the Americans out, while giving the US military an
excuse to remain in Iraq. Their general attitude was expressed by Aws
Khafaji, a Sadrist cleric, after a day of coordinated terrorist attacks
in June (Washington Post, June 25, 2004):
We condemn and denounce yesterday's bombings and attacks on police
centers and innocent Iraqis, which claimed about 100 lives. These are
attacks launched by suspects and lunatics who are bent on destabilizing
the country and ruining the peace so that the Iraqi people will remain
in need of American protection.
A few days later, Muqtada al-Sadr spoke out against beheading: "We
denounce those who decapitate prisoners. Islamic law does not permit
them to do this, and anyone who does can be counted a criminal and be
punished if seized." (NY Times, July 24) A few days later, he condemned
the bombing of Christian Churches, (NY Times, August 3). Later that
fall, the Sadrists freed 15 Iraqi national guards who were being held in
exchange for an arrested Sadrist cleric, declaring "Kidnapping is not
our style, let alone killing. The time has not yet come for us to follow
this method." (GlobalSecurity.org, September 25, 2004)

Moreover, the Sadrists widely circulated a leaflet declaring their
willingness to work with the police in protecting the country's
infrastructure from terrorist bombings (Washington Post, June 25, 2004):

The Mehdi army is ready to cooperate actively and positively with honest
elements from among the Iraqi police and other patriotic forces, to
partake in safeguarding government buildings and facilities, such as
hospitals, electricity plants, water, fuel and oil refineries, and any
other site that might be a target for terrorist attacks.
They even aligned themselves with the interim administration for this
endeavor. Sayeed Rahim al-Alaq, deputy head of the committee that
drafted the list of offenses described above, told New York Times
reporter Fisher: "We are with the government. We are anti-terrorists."
(July 16, 2004)

The importance of this clear denunciation of the terrorists was nicely
expressed by independent reporter Rahul Mahajan (DemocracyNow.org June
28, 2004):
I think that what has happened with the resistance in the last few days
is really a dramatic, important and positive development. Last week, as
you know, there was a single day of violence on which over 100 people
were killed. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's jihad claimed responsibility for it
... Across the country, anti-occupation figures - militant Sunni
clerics, Muqtada al-Sadr's organization, even a representative of
mujahideen in Fallujah - all made open, public statements denouncing his
acts and distinguishing between terrorism committed by foreigners - much
of which is directed at Iraqis - and what they call legitimate
resistance. It marks the emergence of the resistance as a political
force ...
In Sadr City, the on-the-ground policies vis-a-vis the terrorists have
yet to be definitively developed. In the absence of clear policies, the
terrorists represent an ongoing threat to the viability of the
resistance, since their indiscriminate attacks antagonize Iraqi citizens
while providing the principle rationale for the presence of occupation
troops.

Liberated areas and the question of 'law and order'
Despite important differences in religious beliefs, the proto-government
in Sadr City is similar to the proto-governments that developed in
Fallujah and other Sunni cites after the first battle of Fallujah in
April 2004. (For a detailed portrait of the Fallujah government before
the November reconquest by the Americans, see the extraordinary series
of articles by Nir Rosen in Asia Times Online, July 15-24, 2004 - Inside
the Iraqi resistance). The summer of 2004 saw an increasing number of
liberated cities, with the American troops on the outskirts,
unsuccessfully trying to reconquer them, leading to Tom Engelhardt's
elegant portrait of the new Iraqi reality (TomDispatch, July 25, 2003):
Think of Sunni Iraq - and possibly parts of Shi'ite Iraq as well - as a
"nation" of city-state fiefdoms, each threatening to blink off [the US]
map of "sovereignty", despite our 140,000 troops and our huge bases in
the country.
He quoted independent reporter Robert Dreyfuss to the effect that this
process is already very far along (TomPaine.com July, 22, 2004):
Cities all over Iraq are totally outside the control of either the US
forces or the government of Iraq. Not only Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra,
but other population centers in central Iraq are virtually
self-contained city-states. The Kurds run their little enclave all by
themselves. Parts of Baghdad are no-go zones for Americans. And in the
south, fascist Shi'ite militia and armed gangs controlled by
Iranian-backed mullahs and the likes of Ayatollah [Ali al-]Sistani run
things without any help from Baghdad.
In attacking first Najaf, then Tal Afar and Samarra, and finally
tackling the center of the Sunni resistance in Fallujah, the US was
seeking to reverse this process. But these attacks were not designed to
restore order; they were, instead, intended to prevent the consolidation
of a very orderly anti-American status quo in a constantly expanding set
of "liberated" areas.

Ironically, the American attacks in the fall of 2004 underscore the
larger contradictions in American policy in Iraq: that the chaos
American leaders keep saying they are preventing will, in fact, occur
only if US military forces succeed in destroying these nascent
city-states.

To see this we need only begin by recalling the description above of the
Sadrist regime in Baghdad. While there is ample room for concern that
the consolidation of Mehdi power might result in the forcible imposition
of fundamentalist orthodoxy, there appears to be little chance that law
and order would disintegrate. Without underestimating the thuggish
tendencies among the Mehdi and granting that there is currently far too
much street crime in Sadr City, the Sadrists are the only effective
governing force in the Baghdad Shi'ite community. The removal of US
troops would allow Sadrist civilian authority to operate openly and thus
consolidate their daily supervision of the militia. This would enhance
their ability to control the excesses of the militia and systematically
reduce street crime, and would almost certainly result in an orderly
(perhaps too orderly) daily existence in the areas they control.

The same prognosis could have been made with even more assurance, in
Fallujah and the several other Sunni cities that were off limits to the
Americans during the summer of 2004. That is, before the US upset this
guerrilla-imposed order with invasions followed by ongoing battles with
the resistance. In the early winter of 2004, therefore, the choice in
the Sunni areas appeared to be between peacefully run cities controlled
by the resistance, or chaotic, constantly disrupted cities in which
large numbers of American troops prevented the guerrillas from
exercising control.

In the meantime, the Kurdish provinces had a peaceful existence based on
a much more fully developed form of local control, resting largely on
their own militia, the peshmerga, and the two political formations that
control them. The absence of an American military presence in the
Kurdish region has not been a problem; on the contrary, this absence is
another reassurance that the other areas could and would be quite stable
if only the Americans were not disrupting their efforts.

In the Shi'ite areas of the country, the US maintains a form of
technical control, but most troops are stationed outside the cites and
do not pacify or disrupt daily lives. There is no evidence to suggest
that the American presence has reduced violence or prevented chaos. In
fact, accepted wisdom has been that American entry into the cities would
be a disruptive, not a pacifying, force.

Local law and order would not collapse if the US left. Quite the
contrary - US withdrawal would remove the key force currently preventing
law and order in local communities. Another form of chaos, less
frequently invoked, is civil war, triggered by long-standing friction
among the key groupings in Iraqi society. Such issues as the disputes
over hegemony in Kirkuk, the degree of autonomy to be granted to the
Kurdish provinces; and the Sunni and Kurdish fears that Shi'ite
dominance would lead to tyranny of the majority are all real points of
division that require attention whenever Iraq becomes a sovereign state.


The American presence, however, can do no more than postpone resolution
of these frictions. And, while there is no predicting the course of the
negotiations, there is some reason to be optimistic. The key factor is
the Shi'ites, since they are the overwhelming majority, and Sistani
seems to be able to lead the Shi'ites toward compromise on these issues.
Ironically, the greatest barrier to Sistani's leadership (besides the
occupation) is the soaring popularity of Muqtada, which rests on his
militant resistance to the US. Though the Sadrists have consistently
endorsed cooperation with Sunnis and Kurds, they appear to be more
volatile and less committed to this stance than Sistani. The longer the
US remains, therefore, the more the ongoing guerrilla war strengthens
the position of the Sadrists and weakens the leadership of Sistani. As a
consequence, the continuing US presence may be undermining the chances
of a peaceful resolution on the key divisive issues in Iraqi society.

The final irony is that US success against the guerrillas would almost
certainly guarantee long-term chaos in Iraqi society. The evacuation and
destruction of Fallujah certainly suggests this, but the chaos there is
so monumental that it is probably not typical. The situations in Samarra
- successfully reconquered by the US just before Fallujah - and Mosul -
the main battleground after Fallujah - are more representative. In each
city, the fall and early winter of 2004 were marked by the ongoing
guerrilla war, the constant disruption of city life, an absence of any
orderly law enforcement, and degenerating economic and social
conditions.

The US effort to destroy the insurgency can only succeed if it also
destroys the ability of Iraqis to govern their own communities. Since
the local clerics and tribal leaders have - from the very beginning -
been instrumental in the resistance, defeating the guerrillas involves
detaining or killing the leaders who form the backbone of local civil
society. This became apparent in the fall of 2004, before the demolition
of Fallujah, when the US failed to convince "moderates" in key cities to
negotiate truce agreements that delivered militant leaders to the
Americans for arrest and punishment. The failure of these negotiations
left the US with the choice of conceding rule to the insurgents or
attempting to reconquer the cities and removing the local leadership. In
Fallujah, the US military leadership decided that they could only
accomplish this by demolishing much of the city and converting the vast
majority of residents into refugees.

Contrary to the almost universally accepted mantra, the US is not
preventing chaos in Iraq, it is creating it.

So far, Sadr City has escaped the frontal assaults visited upon Tal
Afar, Samarra, Mosul and Fallujah. In some sense, the failure of the
American military to complete the pacification of these cities may be
Sadr City's main protection, since the US troops have been stretched
thin by the ongoing fighting there. Sadr City's status as the center of
Shi'ite insurgency is another protection, since a full-scale attack
there could well trigger insurrections throughout the currently
quiescent Shi'ite areas of Iraq. As this article is written, the US has
honored a semi-official truce that keeps American troops out of the
guerrilla-held area, and therefore allows for the Sadrist government to
continue its rule of the nascent city-state. As long as this lasts,
there will be "law and order" in Sadr City, even if the law is
anti-American and the order is fundamentalist Islam.

Michael Schwartz, professor of sociology at the State University of New
York at Stony Brook has written extensively on popular protest and
insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His work
on Iraq has appeared on TomDispatch, Z Net and Asia Times Online, and in
Z Magazine. His books include Radical Politics and Social Structure, The
Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz), and Social
Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His email
address is ms42@xxxxxxxxxxxxx@optonline.net.

(Copyright Michael Schwartz,



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