What is Next for Muqtada al Sadr?

DAMASCUS -- The war continues between Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the Iraqi army, resulting in nearly 1,000 dead in the Shi'ite slum of Sadr City in Baghdad.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is waging war on his former ally Muqtada, said, "The suffering will not be long in Sadr City. We will save our brothers." Additionally, 20 US soldiers have been killed since April 1. According to a spokesman for the Iraqi government, there have been 925 killed and another 2,605 wounded.

This is a sharp increase in violence, from the 1,082 killed in March, and the very high 721 dead in February. The results have not been satisfying, to say the least, for Maliki. When the onslaught began, Maliki was ill-advised. Somebody told him he would be able to crush the Mahdi Army in a breeze.

Instead the Mahdi Army has not disintegrated, nor has it laid down its arms. It continues to fight -- a war of survival -- against Maliki and many uniformed Iraqi troops have laid down their arms and decided to stop fighting. In some cases, to the horror of the Americans urging Maliki to continue the war, some have even shifted sides, and taken up arms with Muqtada.

The young cleric insists his aim is to fight the Americans, not fellow Iraqis in the Maliki government, which he helped prop up in 2006. Gunmen had been attacking US troops, prompting Lieutenant Colonel Steve Stover, a spokesman for the U.S. military, to say, "We have every right to defend ourselves. The problem is that they are using houses, rooftops and alleyways [as cover]." He added, "We are not preventing food, water, emergency vehicles from entering or exiting Sadr City."

Residents of the Shi'ite slum claim otherwise, saying that for the past week they have been left with no water or electricity. Lawlessness and chaos prevail, and the authorities recently found more than 100 bodies in two mass graves, one in al-Gab, 80 kilometers north of Baghdad, and another south of the Iraqi capital. Most of the bodies had their hands tied, with gunshots straight to the head -- at close range. It is unclear who is behind these assassinations, the Americans, the Sadrist, Iraqi men in uniform, or all of the above.

Maliki realizes the Shi'ite rug has been snatched from beneath his feet. Muqtada is now king among Iraqi Shi'ites. He knew this was coming; the handwriting had been on the wall since 2006, but he never had the courage to confront -- let alone fight -- Muqtada. The cleric is powerful, becoming increasingly rich (not for personal indulgences but to distribute among his followers) and is using symbols that enflame Shi'ite emotions, which made Maliki snap, "I don't know how these people use the [Shi'ite religious] names we respect like Mahdi and Sadr." He was referring to Muqtada's father, Mohammad Sadiq, a very popular and respected Shi'ite leader who was killed by the Saddam Hussein regime in 1999.

This circus cannot go on for long. Maliki has threatened that the Sadrists, who control 30 seats in the 275-seat parliament, will be disqualified from the October provincial elections unless the Mahdi Army is disbanded. Barham Salih, the deputy prime minister, denied any attempt at rooting out the Sadrists, stressing that Maliki wanted to rid himself of the militias only (meaning the Mahdi Army), saying; "The Sadr movement is an indigenous, major political movement of this country. Attempts at isolating them or excluding them will not serve Iraq's stability and prosperity. It is in our interest to have the Sadr movement as an integral part of the political process."

Maliki, he added, was nevertheless "very serious" about the militias, claiming he will disarm all of them, making no reference however, to "good militias" like the Kurdish Peshmerga, which operates in northern Iraq, or the Badr Brigade which is loyal to Maliki's ally Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC).