Support for Wanted Cleric Runs Deep

Qassim Mardan Saadi reclines on a cushion in a neighbor’s front room and recalls how his father sobbed when he saw the footage last week of four American contractors being killed and mutilated.

Saadi talks of how excited he was when U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein, and boasts that they can still patrol his neighborhood without being shot at. He welcomes a Western visitor and pledges his safety. And then he talks fulsomely about the man who taught him to respect others and forswear violence -- Muqtada Sadr, the Shiite Muslim cleric whom U.S.-led occupation forces have declared public enemy No. 1.

Thousands of Sadr’s black-uniformed followers fought fierce battles with coalition forces last week. Many Iraqis fear the fiery young cleric, and intellectuals here in hushed voices call Sadr “that crazy man.” President Bush has condemned Sadr loyalists as “thugs and terrorists.”

But Sadr has untold thousands of other, as-yet-unarmed followers, men such as Saadi, a 31-year-old electrician. The U.S. faces a difficult task in pacifying the cleric without enraging Saadi and other Shiites whose patience with the Americans they once welcomed is wearing thin -- and who will not brook mistreatment of a man they revere.

“I do not believe in violence,” said Saadi, a regular at the huge, relatively peaceful Baghdad street protests organized by Sadr over the last several weeks. “But if it is necessary for me to carry a weapon, I would.”

Saadi says he is baffled that Americans have branded Sadr as a terrorist. “How can one call Sadr a terrorist?” Saadi said. “It’s the same word used for Osama bin Laden.”

To Saadi, the man who can best be compared with Bin Laden is deposed dictator Hussein, who is believed to have ordered the assassination of Sadr’s father, Mohammed Sadeq, in 1999.

The danger for U.S. forces is that Saadi and other moderate Sadr loyalists could be incited by the increasingly common view that the Americans are taking Hussein’s place in oppressing the Shiite cleric. In their minds, it has always been the duty of Sadr’s supporters to resist such forces. In fact, Saadi said today’s Baghdad feels like 1999. Once again, people driving in streets with pictures of Sadr -- the son this time -- are stopped at armed checkpoints. Worshipers must turn down their stereos before they listen to a recording of a Sadr sermon so as not to draw unwelcome attention. Troops are storming Shiite neighborhoods.

And Sadr, in a statement Tuesday, said he expected to be killed -- a reminder to his followers of the fate of his father.

“It is the same situation as under Saddam’s regime,” he said. “It is the same demands too -- for freedom, [unfettered] Friday sermons.”

Saadi was born to a large and devout middle-class family living on the edge of a massive Shiite slum in Baghdad. Like many Shiites, his family joined an abortive 1991 uprising against Hussein after the Persian Gulf War. Saadi had studied under Mohammed Sadr, then the nation’s most revered Shiite cleric.

After the senior Sadr was assassinated, Saadi was briefly arrested and fled to Cyprus, leaving behind his wife and three young children.

Saadi returned to Iraq only in the weeks after last spring’s invasion had toppled Hussein, ready to embrace America for liberating his country.

Instead, he said, “I found Iraq destroyed.”

Baghdad was a rubble-strewn ruin. The only job open was the extremely hazardous post of an Iraqi police officer. Saadi put aside his electrical training and started driving a taxi to make ends meet.

He said he watched as Americans appointed leaders to run Iraq who seemed ready to sell out his homeland and do little to end the country’s crime and infrastructure woes. “The United States does not want a patriotic Iraqi leader, one who loves his country,” Saadi said. “They want a puppet.”

There was one bright spot -- Muqtada Sadr had been released from house arrest. Saadi’s old neighborhood, once called Saddam City, was renamed Sadr City, and Sadr was free to preach steely sermons at the mosques -- and gather an armed militia. Both acts drew the wary attention of occupation forces.

Late last month, the occupation shut down a virulently anti-American newspaper loyal to Sadr for allegedly fomenting violence. Sadr responded with a fierce sermon pledging to join Lebanese and Palestinian militants. The U.S. arrested a top Sadr aide and announced that the cleric was a wanted man, and violent clashes erupted across the country.

Last week, Saadi joined several Sadr followers in the neighbor’s squat concrete house in Sadr City. Saadi could not hold the gathering at his own home because of tense relations with his father, a follower of the country’s most popular Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a moderate who is believed to disapprove of Sadr.

As a documentary on the invasion of Iraq, replete with images of civilian casualties, aired on the Al Jazeera satellite television channel in the background, Saadi and his friends spoke passionately of Sadr’s holiness. Sheik Farhan Bidan Jasim, a respected local leader, compared Sadr to one of the holiest figures in the Shiite pantheon -- Imam Hussein, a descendant of the prophet Muhammad who was assassinated 1,300 years ago.

“There will be a Hussein in every age,” Jasim said, referring to the imam. “The Hussein of this age is Muqtada. He is with the people; he is against evil.”

Although their leader has excoriated the occupiers in repeated sermons since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Saadi and the other men said they were mystified by what they saw as the Americans’ aggression toward Sadr. Sadr’s militia is for self-defense only and the U.S. has been picking a fight with the group, they said.

“I advise the Americans, for your own safety, don’t mess with the Shiites,” Sheik Jabbar Said Dhabi said. “It’s going to be like Vietnam.”

The Sadr supporters urged a Western visitor to not mistake their warnings for violent feelings, and made a point of welcoming him in their home with soft drinks and a huge lunch.

But they urged him not to mistake their sympathy for weakness. “You need to be strong in pursuing justice,” Jasim said.