Al Sadr to BBC : Resistance in Iraq 'legitimate' , quotes Bush

[tocqueville]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4691865.stm

"The occupation in itself is a problem. Iraq not being independent is the problem. And the other problems stem from that - from sectarianism to civil war," he said. "The entire American presence causes this."

Newsnight's interview with Moqtada Sadr will be broadcast at 2230 BST on Monday 18 July.

[Alpharetta]

1. I thought Al Sadr had signed up with the centrist Shiites

and had agreed to keep a lid on his militia. which I thought was why Sadr City (a ghetto of 1 million in Baghdad) has been relatively peaceful.

I wonder if this is a bad sign.

[bemildred]

2. Al Sadr has not changed his rhetoric since day one.

He is keeping his powder dry, from what I can tell, and the occupation and the "government" are content that he do that, having their hands pretty full already. He seems not to want to pick a fight with al Sistani, but continues to insist on an end to the occupation, as here, and continues to make friendly noises towards the Sunni resistance.

He appears to me to be an Iraqi nationalist. Which way he goes will be a big issue in the Civil War. It is very interesting to me that he is being given a platform to speak here.

[Alpharetta]

4. You're pretty much right

For a while there it looked to me he was going along with the formation of the parliament since he would enjoy the benefits of a Shitte majority. Looks like I missed this piece in the Wash Post where he ended "ambiguity over whether Sadr had surrendered his arms for a place in the political process."

But I guess those "friendly noises" he's made toward the Sunni are a thing of the past, if the reports are true about his militia rounding up Sunnis.

[bemildred]

5. I'm not sure how much control he has of "his" militias.

I have seen friendly overtures to the Sunni quite recently.
I would not trust the Kurd media on that subject.

Here's a bit:

"It's gotten to the point that I am a Sunni and I am afraid to say it," he said.

His wife agreed. She worries about him. Her 13-year-old son and her husband used to go together to a nearby Sunni mosque; three months ago they stopped because of the danger.

It's the violence that scares Amira. She doesn't understand why Sunnis keep attacking Shiites, she said.

She watches pictures of a Shiite mosque destroyed by an explosion as people prayed or a Shiite sheik who was killed on his way to work. Why do they attack "the house of God"? she asked.

"I can't bear it," she said, her face framed with a white scarf. "Muslims are praying. … God will avenge who's behind it."

They joke that their son has to pray with one hand to his side and the other folded under his chest in honor of his mother and father.

Wissam has a picture of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in his room.

"I love him," he said.

"He stood with the Sunnis. He stood against the government," his father added.

On Ashurah, when Shiites mourn the slaughter of Hussein, son of Ali, at the Battle of Karbala, the family plays a tape of mournful stories about the murder.


http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/nation/12145749.htm

[Alpharetta]

6. Interesting

you wonder if this will backfire on him, given the amount of violence perpetrated on Shiites by the Sunni resistance he now appears to deem "legitimate".

[bemildred]

7. I dunno.

I am also skeptical that it is the Sunni blowing up Shi'ia targets.

Although they might go after collaborators, the Sunni resistance has little reason to stoke the fires of ethnic/religious conflict or to bring on a civil war. I consider it likely that some/all of these mosque bombings are false flag operations intended to divide the resistance. The fact that it is consistently blamed on "al Qaeda" and "foreign fighters" is telling to me too; those are propaganda memes that have little to do with the resistance and much to do with justifying the occupation and the stooge government. It is going to be very interesting to see what role Iran chooses to play from here on out.

The choices for the occupation appear very bad at this point, balkanization or expulsion. If balkanization is chosen, we leave Iran and the Shiia in a greatly aggrandized position in the Middle East.

You are correct, of course, that al Sadr could easily end up in the free fire area of this conflict, but he has a huge following in Iraq, and I suspect that offers him some protection, and he got out of the dustup in an Najaf last year, I suspect that was not just luck.

[Djinn]

8. keeping a lid on the militia

doesn't mean his views have changed, he (like the vast majority of Iraqis) does not support the US occupation nor their plans for Iraq's future.

resistance to occupation and corporate looting is absolutely legitimate, unfortunately mentioning that tends to get you labelled a terrorist supporter, but I guess that's what I've been since "you're with us or you're with the terrorists"

[Alpharetta]

3. Al Sadr's militia now patrolling large parts of Baghdad

http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=7275

Iraq is slipping into all-out civil war, a Shia leader declared yesterday, as a devastating onslaught of suicide bombers slaughtered more than 150 people, most of them Shias, around the capital at the weekend.
...
Increasingly hardline Shia militias, such as the outlawed Mahdi Army of the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, are patrolling large parts of Baghdad, often rounding up suspected Sunni insurgents and imprisoning or even killing them.

From:
http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=7275