Meeting the Mahdi Army
By Dan Murphy
It began with a wary feeling-out meeting brokered by Kael Alford, a freelance photographer who frequently works with the Monitor. Hisham gave cautious answers and the conversation steered away from Iraq?s most controversial issues. But in just a few days, caution thawed into warmth: Greetings and farewells marked by a flurry of kisses on the cheeks, conversations marked by concern and hopes for each other?s families and futures, a fabulous meal of roast chicken, fresh figs, and rice on the floor of Hisham?s crowded home, and exhortations to remember that his house was our house.
Who is Hisham? He's a street-level lieutenant for radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr?s Mahdi Army, the men who fought fierce battles with US, British, and Iraqi forces in at least four cities last week. Like many of the militia?s rank and file, he?s also the sort of man who it?s difficult not to like. Hard-working and quietly tough (he practices a form of no-holds-barred street fighting with his friends) he?s rarely as happy as when he?s playing with his 2-year-old nephew on the floor of the family?s unadorned diwan, or public meeting room. Though poor, he brims over with traditional Arab hospitality and patience with guests, even Americans like me.
To understand what?s going on in Iraq, it?s important to move beyond the US military?s often blithe dismissals of the Mahdi Army as ?anti-Iraqi forces? or President George Bush?s statement in a CNN weekend television interview that Iraq?s recent violence is a result of ?people there who can?t stand the thought of a free society emerging in the heart of the Middle East.?
I found it instructive to spend some time with men such as Hisham. He and his pals see themselves as great Iraqi patriots committed to a struggle against both a foreign occupier and the interim government the US appointed. Are they misguided? Many Iraqis will tell you that they are. But that doesn?t undermine the reality of the almost utopian idealism that drives them now. One might even venture to say that a similar chord of idealism can be found in the US belief that it can democratize Iraq, and much of the Middle East.
His political views were shaped by the experience of living under the old regime. And hearing him talk about his personal history, it?s easy to understand why he?s fighting now. Growing up in Sadr City ? the sprawling home to about 2.5 million poor Shiites ? he learned that being Shiite in Saddam Hussein?s Iraq meant being a second-class citizen. Hussein?s intelligence agents swarmed throughout the city, regularly rounding up religious leaders, politicians, even taxi drivers for expressing their political views. In this area where raw sewage bubbles into the streets and power has always been intermittent, he understood that Iraq?s vast oil income was not for the benefit of his people. And he became committed to regime change long before US leaders adopted the phrase.
After Moqtada?s father Mohammed Sadek al-Sadr was assassinated by Hussein in 1999, Hisham participated in a brief uprising against the government. For his efforts he spent nearly five years in Saddam Hussein?s notorious Abu Ghraib prison, most of the first year in solitary confinement and subjected to periodic electric shocks. For Hisham, the US failure to aid the 1999 uprising ? and the US abandonment of a broader Shiite uprising in 1991 after the first President Bush had urged the Iraqi people to take up arms against Hussein ? lies at the heart of his mistrust of US intentions today.
?We don?t hate Americans, but we do hate the American government,?? he says. ?They?re calling us terrorists, but we?ve been the ones fighting for Iraq all along. Wouldn?t Americans do what we?re doing if a foreign army came and occupied their homes??
There is also a rich irony in the fact that US forces are engaged in almost daily combat with followers of a major Shiite movement. US officials before the war had predicted that the country?s Shiite community, delighted to be rid of Hussein, would rally around the US effort. Instead, one of the groups with a long and bloody history of struggle against Hussein, is now fighting the Americans.
How do I feel about Hisham? It?s a tough question. My time with him was spent in late July and early August, before the outbreak of recent hostilities. Since then, he might have been involved in firefights with US forces, or participated in the launching of mortar rounds in Baghdad that have targeted not only US and Iraqi government installations but civilian hotels. I don?t know.
I certainly think his approach is wrong ? that the Mahdi Army is contributing to a process by which emerging Iraqi politics are coming to be dominated by the law of the gun.
While I condemn his methods, I can also appreciate his purity of motive ? his deep belief that he?s doing the right thing. In that sense, Hisham has something in common with most of the US troops I?ve met in my time in Iraq. This comparison may anger some Americans - or Hisham - but the simple tropes ?we?re here to help,? ?It?s tough now but we?re doing the right thing,? are expressed with the same conviction by both sides.
The US said the Mahdi Army ignited the latest round of hostilities, while Hisham and his friends believe the US provoked the violence by moving patrols into the areas around Moqtada?s home in Najaf. I can?t say who?s right ? but I think Hisham is being honest when he talks about what he believes to be the case. ?There?d be peace right now if the US wanted peace,?? he says. ?We haven?t been given a choice.?
To be sure, the Mahdi Army would like to see something approaching Iran?s Shiite-dominated theocracy take root in Iraq ? a political model that has proven to be repressive and unrepresentative in the last 25 years.
But he sees it as the expression of democracy ? since most Iraqis are Shiite, he reasons that most Iraqis would like a Shiite-dominated government. And since the history of Hussein?s secular regime was so unremittingly brutal, he?s convinced that religious leaders are the only ones with the moral compass to build a more just Iraq. As in so many Muslim countries that suffered under secular dictatorships, most of which have been backed by the US at one point or another, the Mahdi Army?s followers have become convinced that ?Islam is the answer.?
Though most expected the latest outbreak to be a fight to the death, over the weekend, the US bowed to the strength of Sadr?s symbolic position. Holed up near the Shrine of Ali in Najaf, the US realized that a final assault could turn much of Iraq?s Shiite community against them, and it became clear that the Iraqi forces of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi were either unable or unwilling to take on the job themselves. Unfortunately, it?s provided another lesson in the havoc that small groups of men with guns can wreak upon Iraq?s political process.
The Mahdi Army is just one of 10 or so major militias inside the country. Most of the groups are rivals of each other and none have disarmed so far. The entire Kurdish north of the country, Sunni insurgent hotbeds like Fallujah and Sammara, and a number of pockets in the south ? Sadr City, parts of Fallujah, and significant portions of Kut and Basra ? are outside central government control. No doubt most of these militias believe that their cause is in the service of ?democracy? and ?freedom.? But as Iraq moves towards elections, what these groups imagine to be their good intentions are likely to guarantee a flawed, bloody, and potentially failed effort to transform Iraq into a democracy.
The failure of these groups to disarm ? either by force, or because they?re persuaded to join a purely political process ? is emerging as a chief threat to the American experiment in Iraq.
Discussion Zen 5 Speculation (EPYC Turin and Strix Point/Granite Ridge - Ryzen 9000)
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