Shiite Firebrand Seeks to Sway Iraqi Masses Against U.S.

Muqtader Sadr, a plump-faced young sheik, often rouses more than 10,000 angry young men at Friday prayers with rounds of anti-American chants, exhortations to join his army and promises to end the U.S.-led occupation.

He has appeared on the Arabic satellite television channel Al Jazeera and recently gave his first interview to a popular Baghdad newspaper, accusing the recently formed Iraqi Governing Council of being a U.S. puppet.

“The Governing Council is the best agent for the Americans,” said Sadr, who is believed to be in his mid-20s.

Sadr’s confrontational stands tap a vein of virulent opposition to the occupation that is prevalent in Baghdad’s Shiite Muslim ghettos and the sect’s other impoverished enclaves in southern and central Iraq.

He is a pivotal figure in the standoff this week between U.S. troops and Shiites in the poor Thawra neighborhood of northeast Baghdad, which since the war this spring has become popularly known as Sadr City in honor of his father, an eminent ayatollah who was murdered by Saddam Hussein’s forces in 1999.

On Wednesday, troops fired on Shiite protesters, killing one person and injuring four, after gunmen shot at a U.S. helicopter that the crowd believed was trying to tear down a religious banner perched on a defunct communications tower. Clerics who follow Sadr have warned that, unless the American military withdraws from the neighborhood, they will not restrain their followers who might want to attack soldiers.

Because he is almost a cult figure in the neighborhood, Sadr could calm the situation with a few words, or inflame it. Authorities will be watching Friday prayers today in Baghdad and Sadr’s base here in the central Iraq city of Kufa for signs of which tack he might take.

Some dismiss Sadr as a foolish upstart. Lt. Col. Christopher Conlin, the U.S. Marine commander in the city of Najaf, near Kufa, calls him “an immature kid” and “a bit player.”

But Sadr has the advantage of a famous name among long-repressed Shiites, who make up 60% of the nation’s population.

Posters of his father, with his pure white beard and quiet expression, decorate shop walls and car windows throughout the Shiite south, where they are for sale in thousands of religious bookstands. His uncle, also a distinguished ayatollah, was ambushed and killed in 1980. Although Sadr is young and far less educated than the older generation of Shiite leaders, he can trade on the family legacy.

For more than a month, Sadr has used his pulpit in Kufa, about 10 miles from Najaf, to invite young Iraqis to join what he calls his Al Mahdi army and denounce the American-led coalition along with the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council.

The name Al Mahdi refers to the so-called hidden imam, an apocalyptic figure who disappeared in 874 and whose return, it is believed, will herald the arrival of a just world.

Sadr recently insisted that his army will not be armed, although aides have said that its members will be prepared to take up weapons if necessary.

Sadr has ties to fundamentalist clergy in Iran, who wield some influence among Iraqi Shiites, and recently returned from a visit to the Islamic Republic.

Perhaps realizing that he would attract only a limited following among Iraq’s middle-class Shiites, many of whom are moderate, Sadr has used anti-American rhetoric to reach beyond the sect to other disenfranchised groups, including militias that the Americans have pledged to disarm and even former Baath Party members.

“I invite peshmerga [Kurdish fighters] and [Iranian-trained] Badr Brigade members to join our army and not the occupation army,” he said recently to hundreds thronging his mosque courtyard.

He even invited “our brothers the Sunnis” to join him in setting up religious courts to mete out “justice according to Islamic laws.” He also said he planned to form a new governing council made up of all the groups that “did not participate in the current council.”

His call has not fallen on deaf ears. According to Conlin, many of the 10,000 to 15,000 supporters who were bused in to Kufa to hear Sadr speak a couple of weeks ago came from Fallouja and Mosul, two Sunni Muslim strongholds where there is still significant support for Hussein. Others, toting guns, arrived by car, Conlin said.

“If you want to foment an insurrection, you hook up with the guys who are the most disenfranchised, and those are the guys who were hooked up with Saddam,” he said.

Sadr’s suggestion to raise an army has been rejected by the more mainstream clerics of Najaf, a center of Shiite learning.

“The Iraqi army is the national army, which Iraqis lead. Its mission is to defend Iraq’s territory, people and sanctuaries; there is no place for another army besides this army,” said Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the foremost Shiite cleric in Iraq, in response to a written question from The Times.

But in keeping with a long tradition of quietude and a deep reluctance to argue publicly among themselves, neither Sistani nor any other moderate cleric has spoken out.

“For 1,000 years we haven’t discussed specific personalities and what they are saying,” said the white-turbaned Ayatollah Saleh Tai, a senior cleric in Najaf, as he sat in his spare reception room surrounded by acolytes.

Even representatives of the most powerful Shiite group to join the American-backed Governing Council said they did not want to stir the pot.

“We don’t want confrontation, because then we will have blood and the chance for dialogue and discussion will end,” said Adel Abdul Mehdi, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, formerly based in Iran.

Concerns about bloodshed are not mere talk. In the last few weeks, several clerics have been attacked at night by unknown assailants. In two cases, they were beaten so badly that they had to be hospitalized.

While no one has been caught in connection with the assaults, suspicions initially fell on Sadr supporters. Sadr was present when moderate cleric Abdel Majid Khoei and two aides were shot and stabbed to death by a mob in Najaf’s holiest mosque April 10.

Officials of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority have been pressing the moderate clerics in one-on-one discussions to take a public stand, but so far to no avail.

“We’ve said this is a leadership challenge for you, and if you cannot handle this turbulent young cleric, it will send a bad signal about your readiness for power,” said a senior coalition official.

“If you let yourself be divided, look at what’s walking around the edge of the campfire. You cannot afford to break apart as a community.”

--- UNPUBLISHED NOTE ---

In stories after April 9, 2004, Shiite cleric Muqtader Sadr is correctly referred to as Muqtada Sadr.

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