Moqtada al-Sadr - Tag Search

I had to laugh this morning when I read Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal's criticism of Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

"Adding to the brutal mayhem taking place there, we are watching a deliberate effort on the part of the incumbent prime minister, Mr al Maliki, to hijack the results of the election and deny the Iraqi people their legitimately elected government," he said.

The substance of his criticism is actually fair: Maliki and his allies spent weeks complaining about fraud and questioning the validity of the election, but the recently-concluded Baghdad recount found virtually zero evidence of tampering.

But... a member of the Saudi royal family criticizing anyone for being insufficiently democratic? Seriously?

The Washington Post does a little concern-trolling today about the Iraq withdrawal deadline, noting that the Obama administration still plans to withdraw on schedule despite "political uncertainties in Iraq."

Interesting report in Al-Rafidayn this morning, which speculates that Moqtada al-Sadr is dropping his opposition (عربي) to Nouri al-Maliki's reappointment as prime minister. (Well, sort of.)

Amir al-Kanani, a senior member of the Sadrist movement, told the newspaper that the Sadrists have no "red lines" on the next prime minister. He said the main concern is that State of Law and the Iraqi National Alliance both adhere to the agreed-upon mechanism for appointing the next PM.

More than 60 people have been killed in a series of bombings across Baghdad and Anbar province.

The bombings in Baghdad targeted civilian areas in several different neighborhoods. Two car bombs reportedly went off in Sadr City, killing nearly 40 people. One bomb struck a market; the other went off near Moqtada al-Sadr's headquarters (عربي).

Still far too early to say what will happen with the next Iraqi government; everyone is meeting with everyone else, and nobody wants to tip their hand yet (this Marc Lynch tweet sums it up well). But here's your latest roundup of election news, which includes meetings in Riyadh and possibly Tehran and some speculation about the future of State of Law.

It's the weekend in Iraq, so we'll hear less about post-election political maneuvering for a couple of days -- but two stories worth mentioning this morning. First, Moqtada al-Sadr's supporters have started their referendum to choose the next prime minister.

The horse-trading continues in Iraq: Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is trying to cement a possible merger with the Iraqi National Alliance, but the Sadrist movement seems reluctant; and Iyad Allawi is trying to attract Kurdish support, but the Kurds seem reluctant.

There's a lot to keep track of, so we've rounded up a bullet-point list of the latest political maneuverings after the jump. We'll do similar lists in the coming days as they're needed.

Polls closed in Iraq a few minutes ago after 10 hours of voting. The ballot was marred by a few dozen insurgent attacks around the country -- but casualties are remarkably low, and voter turnout (anecdotally at least) seems to be fairly high.

We'll update this thread throughout the day with new developments. Today's news will largely come from non-Iraqi sources: Many Iraqi newspapers suspended publication for the day to allow their staffs time to vote. Here's Al-Rafidayn's statement on the suspension (عربي), for example; As-Sabaah has a banner across its homepage (عربي). So most of today's news comes from Western and pan-Arab news sources.

Iraq's Supreme Court has reportedly reissued a six-year-old warrant for Moqtada al-Sadr's arrest.

This story isn't getting much attention in the English-language media -- everyone's focused on the Diyala bombings (more on those soon) -- but it has the potential to be quite significant.

The warrant is for the 2003 murder of Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a pro-American Shi'ite cleric who was hacked to death by a mob in Najaf. The Coalition Provisional Authority issued a warrant for Sadr's arrest in 2004, but he was never arrested, and the warrant was eventually buried as part of a reconciliation deal with his Mahdi Army.

The Iraqi prime minister is getting hammered from all sides this morning. Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister and head of the Iraqiyya coalition, accuses Maliki of staging a coup (عربي) against a "peaceful transfer of power" in Iraq.

"The government has made a decision, in collusion with suspicious forces inside and outside Iraq, to exclude important politicians from participating in the political process. The Iraqi people know this is a conspiracy to ignore the will of voters and to exclude opponents of the parties in power... it is a preemptive coup."

Then we have Motqada al-Sadr, who condemns the Maliki government (عربي) for failing to protect the Iraqi people from ongoing violence. "Shame, all shame" on Maliki, Sadr says, "and the blood of the people is on... this government."

Too early to tell if this has any significance, but several inmates started a prison riot at Abu Ghraib yesterday. They set a fire in their cell, then tried to overpower the guards who came to put out the fire. Eventually the guards started shooting and "an unspecified number of inmates" were killed.

Prison riots are not uncommon in Iraq, or in any country with prisons, for that matter. The Iraqi inmates were allegedly protesting poor conditions in Abu Ghraib.

If the rioting inmates were Sunnis, then the riot might fit into the broader perception of the Shi'ite-dominated government riding roughshod over the Sunni minority. But it sounds like the inmates were Shi'ites affiliated with Moqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat has the first confirmation I've seen that Moqtada al-Sadr's party wants to join the Shi'ite alliance announced yesterday.

The confirmation comes in an interview with Asmaa al-Mousawi, a high-ranking member of the party, who said the group received "assurances" from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the other coalition member.

"It is expected that some high-ranking positions will be obtained, depending upon [a candidates] competency. In the past, the US occupation prevented [the Sadrist trend from participating in government] but following the withdrawal of US forces, there is nothing to prevent the Sadrist trend from participating in government," al-Mousawi said.

Sadr's movement backed out of the United Iraqi Alliance in 2007 because it felt the coalition was too dominated by other parties (ISCI and Maliki's Dawa party).

Bloomberg has some more detail on the alleged ISCI/Sadr alliance. It was announced today at a press conference called by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the former Iraqi prime minister. Also at the press conference were Adel Abdel Mahdi, an ISCI member, and Ahmed Chalabi, everyone's favorite ideologically-flexible Iraqi politician.

Notably absent: Anyone from the Sadrist movement.

Well, well. Interesting news out of Iraq this morning, where the Washington Post reports that prime minister Nouri al-Maliki will not be part of a proposed coalition government of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and Moqtada al-Sadr's political party. But how significant is this?

Let's begin with a caveat: This ISCI-Sadr alliance hasn't actually happened yet. It could very well fall through; the two parties have clashed in the past, for example in Najaf, where Sadr's group has tried to build its influence and undermine ISCI. Or the alliance could hold and Maliki's Dawa party could join it. Such was the rumor last month, when Sadr said he was considering an alliance with both parties.

That said, if this report is true, it suggests two things about Maliki: The other two Shi'ite parties view him as a liability, and he's still confident about his own position.

The New York Times this morning makes the same observation I made yesterday: Despite the huge amount of anti-Shi'a violence over the last two months, Iraq's Shi'a population has exercised tremendous restraint. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has cautioned against any violent retaliation; Shi'a militia groups have not surfaced.

Even Moqtada's counseling caution:

"Sayid Moktada al-Sadr has told us in his instructions that we have to follow the orders of the howza," said Sheik Jalil al-Sarkhey, the deputy head of the Sadr office in Sadr City, the huge Shiite slum in Baghdad. "We are all agreed; there will be no spilling of Iraqi blood."

Still, the pessimist in me wonders how long this will last. The Times mentions the 2006 shrine bombing in Samarra as a sort of spark that caused an explosion of sectarian violence. But tensions had been brewing for two years before the Samarra bombing -- they provided the fuel for this hypothetical explosion.

I can't help but wonder if we're building towards a similar tipping point.

While Al-Maliki is in Washington, Moqtada al-Sadr is visiting a "number of Arab countries," according to an Al-Sharq Al-Awsat report. He's in Syria right now; al-Sadr met with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad earlier this week.

It's hard to separate fact from speculation -- the article is heavy on the latter -- but it seems Moqtada is thinking about joining a coalition with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. And there are rumors that he's also considering an alliance with Dawa (which already runs candidates with ISCI, under the United Iraqi Alliance coalition).

If those rumors are true, Iraq would have a unified coalition of Shi'a parties running candidates in 2010.