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Shiite cleric sadr doesnt call for election boycott { January 24 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31170-2005Jan23.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31170-2005Jan23.html
Sadr Group Signals Rejection Of Election
Shiite Cleric Eyes Role Outside System
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 24, 2005; Page A01
BAGHDAD -- Around the corner from a five-mile line stretching toward a gas station, past election posters calling voting a religious duty, hundreds of bleary-eyed protesters threw down what goes for prayer carpets among followers of the Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr. They put down black-checkered kaffiyehs, the sweaters they wore, sacks of flour distributed as government rations and, most commonly, scraps of cardboard.
It was noon, the time for Muslims to pray. It was time, too, for them to make their demands heard at the Iraqi Oil Ministry as part of a four-day protest last week over Iraq's months-long fuel crisis.
"They must hear that the Iraqi people will always demand their rights, even if we give our lives!" the preacher declared. Behind him, slogans put up on a concrete blast wall echoed the protesters' pleas. "We don't want elections," one read. "We want electricity."
The protest in Baghdad and others in towns across southern Iraq, including Kut, Amarah and Karbala, marked the latest campaign by Sadr's group, a grass-roots movement led by Shiite clergy that claims to speak on behalf of the Shiite downtrodden. Through protests, sermons and declarations by the reclusive Sadr, the movement is signaling its doubts about the Iraqi election, ending months of ambiguity over whether Sadr had surrendered his arms for a place in the political process.
Sadr's militia fought U.S. forces twice last year, in Baghdad and southern Iraq, and the movement has emerged as a persistent wild card in the U.S. plan for a durable political system that will leave Iraq with a modicum of stability and permit an American military withdrawal. The decisive moment may come Sunday, when Iraqis go to the polls to choose a national assembly, the country's first real election in half a century.
Sadr's men have stopped short of calling for a boycott but insist they are not supporting the election. In coded language, they have ridiculed Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's most influential religious leader, whose perceived backing of the top Shiite coalition has made it the favorite in the vote. Loath to provoke the U.S. military, which killed hundreds of its followers in last year's fighting, the Sadr movement has relegated its militia to a lower profile while keeping up its strident rhetoric.
The movement is gambling that the deep disenchantment in the capital over epidemic kidnappings, shortfalls in food rations, the threat of insurgent attacks and, most visibly, the fuel crisis will persist under a new government.
On the outside looking in, unsullied by a role in that government, Sadr's men say they will capitalize on the disenchantment, turning their numbers "from hundreds of thousands into millions," as one official put it. They are fashioning themselves as a street-level protest movement, as nationalist as it is religious, with the threat of force to back its demands.
"The government has given nothing to the Iraqi people, and all the political parties say yes to the Americans. The elections are useless. They will do nothing for us," said Nizar Khanjar, 27, a participant in last week's protest, where hardly any of the men had gray hair and some were too young to shave. "Only the Sadr office is defending the rights of the people."
Through the first year of the occupation, U.S. officials were almost reflexively dismissive of Sadr, at one point calling him "a two-bit thug." They now acknowledge the extent of his popular support, although since the fighting ended conclusively in October he has receded from the forefront of their worries. Now, U.S. officials are willing to wait and see what the group's next move will be.
"He's purposely laying low," a Western diplomat in Baghdad said.
As recently as this month, U.S. officials were saying they thought Sadr would take part in the elections, but they are reconsidering. At the same time, many say they don't believe a renewal of fighting with his militia, the Mahdi Army, is imminent, even if suspicions were raised by the killing this month of a police chief and local council member in the Baghdad slum where he enjoys his most strident support.
"Today, he seems to be choosing neither" political participation nor armed revolt, the diplomat said.
For their part, officials with Sadr's movement say they see little room for engagement with the Americans, perceiving provocation in almost every action by the U.S. military. One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, complained that 345 Sadr followers had been arrested since a truce brokered by Sistani ended fighting in the Shiite holy city of Najaf in August, although he acknowledged the Americans' "excellent intelligence." They have been rebuffed in attempts to win the release of senior leaders who guided the movement after Sadr's revered father was assassinated by agents of former president Saddam Hussein's government in 1999.
"It's like we're talking to corpses and the deaf," the official said.
Like other officials in the movement, he rejected a role in the elections, quoting a statement by Sadr this month: "I personally will stay away [from the elections] until the occupiers stay away from them, and until our beloved Sunnis participate in them," the statement read. "Otherwise they will lack legitimacy and democracy."
More is at stake for Sadr than the fate of an American nemesis in Iraq. The course he chooses holds broad implications for the country itself. His movement offers a vision that contrasts -- often very strikingly -- with that of Sistani, who has deemed elections the way to ensure power for Iraq's Shiite majority. By backing elections, Sistani has tacitly aligned himself with the U.S. vision for Iraq as a government with the legitimacy to extend its writ throughout the country and more effectively battle the insurgency.
Sadr's movement, almost obsessive in its opposition to occupation, rejects the premise of that vision. Infusing the worldly with the sacred, his followers celebrate what might best be termed embattled righteousness. In its most peaceful incarnation, the movement represents a critic that will push the demands of what it sees as its constituency -- the mustadafin and mahrumin, the oppressed and deprived, resonant terms in Shiite politics. In its more militant form, it presents itself as a force outside the system, challenging, perhaps violently, the status quo.
"Those hoping for something from the elections should instead seek God's help in meeting their demands," Sheik Nasser Saadi shouted to the thousands gathered recently in the Baghdad slum neighborhood of Sadr City for open-air prayers.
Along a four-lane street with a packed-dirt median, vendors sold bananas and pastries to worshipers, and a municipal truck with pictures of Sadr's father on the windshield pumped water for ritual washing. Boys hawked the movement's newspaper, Sadr, whose editorial asked: "Why is it the fate of Iraqis to bear either a dictator or destruction and death?" The men of the neighborhood gathered in a festive mood for a weekly sermon that, since Hussein's fall in 2003, has been one part street theater, one part political rally.
"We will all sacrifice our souls for Sadr and his son Moqtada!" the crowd chanted.
Saadi, the prayer leader, yelled back: "I can't hear you!"
The chants grew louder and more sustained, with men jabbing their fists in the air.
"God's blessings on you," Saadi answered approvingly.
In the hour-long sermon, Saadi reiterated the movement's stance on the election: no boycott, but no participation. More than a dozen independent candidates loyal to Sadr are thought to be running for assembly seats, and Saadi said followers could vote if they liked -- in vain, in his words.
"The elections are like air passing through a net," he said. "You can wait for the results, but I'm not waiting with you."
The clerics in Sadr's movement belie the image of the feeble priest. They are more street fighter than ascetic, more brawler than pastor. With hands like spatulas, crashing down to make a point, the barrel-chested, gray-haired Saadi challenged the worshipers.
"Do you accept the occupation?" he shouted. "Go and demand your rights!"
An earlier protest outside the Oil Ministry had fizzled, and on this day Saadi wanted a bigger turnout. Corrupt officials and insurgents were looting oil supplies, he declared, and the price of kerosene for cooking had skyrocketed. Cars had to wait hours in line for gasoline, he said, while the Americans were filling the tanks of their Bradley Fighting Vehicles and "fouling the air." Shifting from formal Arabic to slang, he chided the men for their lack of enthusiasm: They should do better this week.
"It seems that the birds have eaten your tongues," Saadi said, playing on an Iraqi proverb. "This is not what I expected from you. This is not what I know about your courage."
Hundreds turned out the following week, sleeping in tents outside the ministry, lining up behind pickup trucks serving lentils, rice, bread and dates and hanging banners on anything upright.
"No rights are lost if they are demanded," said one slogan. "Long live the Sadrist resistance," read another.
Some of the protesters wore green placards on their chests, bearing Sadr's slogans in large letters: "Christians are your brothers in this country," and "Beloved Iraqi people, remain as brothers, as God's messenger commanded."
"There is no country in the world that suffers crisis after crisis like this," said Haider Farhan, 23, one of the protesters. "We're a country blessed with oil, and we have nothing."
While Sadr's officials are blunt about their stance on the elections, the mood among their followers is far more ambiguous. Support for the elections is usually inversely proportional to support for Sadr: the more fervent the backing, the less likely his followers are to say they will vote. In fact, some Shiite residents of Sadr City, which is home to more than 2 million people, seem confused by the conflicting signals from Sadr and Sistani, who has described the election as "a religious and national duty."
Near the group's office in Sadr City stood 38-year-old Hassan Katib, one of the worshipers.
"The elections are very important for Sistani, but what about the other things?" he asked. "What about food, kerosene, food? People are starving now." He looked out at the street and quoted a line from Mutanabi, a medieval Arab poet: "The sword is more reliable than the book."
"The armed struggle should continue," Katib said, by way of explanation. "It's necessary."
Election posters are scarce around Sadr's office, but they abound in the side streets, many bearing Sistani's portrait.
"We want stability and security, and we want a legitimate ruler," said Hassan Mawat, 37, a carpenter who sat at a small table eating lunch with friends. He said he planned to vote for the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi.
"There's no order, and there's no discipline," he said. "We need a real government."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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