this year took a new turn last week as Iraq’s prime minister leaned on militant cleric Muqtada as-Sadr to give up his opposition to a US military presence.
The United States clearly thinks Iraq needs some US troops, and most Iraqi politicians privately concede that the country can’t make it on its own. But no one in the decision chain wants to step forward and be the first to say some Americans could stay. In addition, Iran is lobbying every Iraqi politician it can talk to to boot the Yankees out.
Maliki last Wednesday said If a solid majority of Iraq’s main political blocs decide to back a US presence, then Sadr should abandon his opposition and fall in line. “That is the mechanism of democracy,” Maliki said.
Pointedly, Maliki did not himself publicly advocate keeping the Americans. Nor did he say that Sadr should advocate keeping some Americans. Maliki simply said that if the other parties in parliament lined up behind a bill allowing some Americans to stay, Sadr should practice democracy, recognize what the majority wants and cease saying he will kill any Americans left in Iraq on January 1.
And, surprise of surprises, Sadr hinted he might just do that.
J. Scott Carpenter, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state during Sadr’s rise and his militia’s fiercest clashes with US forces, told The Washington Post, “Maliki’s comments cannot be read as anything other than a direct political challenge to Sadr.”
Maliki and Sadr formed a political alliance last fall, Sadrists say, predicated on following through on the three-year-old US-Iraqi agreement that calls for all American forces to leave the country by December 31.
The firebrand cleric wasted no time Friday before balking at Maliki’s proposal in public. But he just as quickly backed off his own rhetoric.
For the first time since returning to Iraq after nearly four years of self-imposed exile in Iran, Sadr took to the pulpit and delivered an unannounced sermon at Friday prayers in Najaf.
Sadr minced no words. “We appeal to all Iraqi people to expel the US troops from Iraq through demonstrations and marches,” he said. “We will not accept the occupation’s troops staying, not even for one day after the end of this year.”
But The Washington Post reported that after the sermon, Sadr returned to the troop issue and suggested he could adhere to Maliki’s request. If all of Iraq’s political blocs decide to support a US troop extension, Sadr said, he may reevaluate his pledge to kill Americans after January 1. “The matter … is connected to the public and political agreement among Iraqis,” he said.
Carpenter said Maliki’s effort to draw out Sadr now, at the beginning of what Maliki predicted Wednesday would be a months-long political debate, may prove to be a critical move.
“It’s definitely smarter now than when the threat of US troops [leaving] is imminent at the end of the year,” Carpenter said, adding that it will allow Maliki to see whether Sadr will actually resort to violence. “Personally, I think Sadr has been bluffing, and Maliki is calling his bluff.”
Mehdi Khalaji, an Iranian-American senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, partially agreed. Sadr’s movement has evolved in the past two years, he said, spearheaded by suit-wearing politicians in Baghdad and focusing on community support for his followers in the south. Sadr has spent much of the past month acting more like a political leader than a militia boss, meeting with regional officials about electricity shortages and government services.
“It may be difficult for him to deny the responsibility of his party,” Khalaji said. “We should expect some change in Sadr’s policy.”