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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1791811,00.html
By Stephen Farrell, Middle East Correspondent
HE IS lowly of rank, not yet grey of beard and his scholarship is questionable. But his name is everything.
Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, the cleric accused of fomenting the unrest in the south, enjoys the inestimable advantage of belonging to a dynasty of revered Shia clerics that in Iraq confers upon its members the prestige of a Kennedy in Boston or a Gandhi in Delhi.
His cousin, Mohammed Baqr al-Sadr, was one of the most-respected Shia theoreticians until he was assassinated by Saddam Hussein’s henchmen in 1980. His popular and outspoken father, Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, met the same fate along with two of Moqtada’s older brothers in 1999, conferring upon the portly young cleric unimpeachable — if second-hand — credentials in the all-important Shia fields of martyrdom, nationalism and spirituality.
Now in his late twenties or early thirties, Hojatoleslam al-Sadr began his ascent immediately after Saddam’s fall by appealing directly to the millions of poverty-stricken Shias who suffered under the Baathists. He formed charitable organisations to deliver relief to the poor and set up the Mehdi Army militia amid growing lawlessness in post-Saddam Iraq. His main following was in Baghdad ’s vast Saddam City slum — instantly renamed Sadr City — and in southern Shia towns such as Basra, Amara and Najaf.
Most expected him to be overshadowed by the more experienced Shia exiles of Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. But Hojatoleslam al-Sadr displayed a ruthlessness and shrewd instinct for demagoguery that served him well. He stood aloof from the post-invasion administrations and volubly attacked the US occupation. He entered politics, running candidates in the January elections , and his militias enforce their ruthless control over the south.
Hojatoleslam al-Sadr has reached out to the Sunnis, apparently intent on widening his powerbase by appealing to disaffected Baghdadis and Fallujans. The strategy of bullet and ballot has served him well. He is unlikely to abandon it.
September 21, 2005 at 10:09 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home