Militias Battle for Iraq // FAI ONLINE

Rival Shiite militias clashed in Iraq last week, as a power struggle between infamous cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his political opponents spilled over from parliament into the streets of the heart of Baghdad’s “Green Zone” on Monday night. At least 30 people were killed in the capital, as the troubled nation edged closer to all-out civil war for the first time in over a decade.

Hostilities have been brewing across Iraq ever since al-Sadr and his bloc of 73 MP’s resigned from Iraq’s parliament in June. The prominent Shi’a cleric-turned-politician had taken advantage of changes in Iraq’s electoral laws during a parliamentary election last year, gaining the largest share of seats, but not an outright majority. Intent on forming a majority government and consolidating power, al-Sadr attempted to co-opt Kurdish and Sunni Arab parties in order to shut out his Shi’a rivals, including former prime ministers Nouri al-Maliki and Haider al-Abadi. Although al-Sadr has a long relationship with the Iranian government, he has now positioned himself as an Iraqi nationalist who decries Iranian influence, and who accuses his Shi’a political rivals in the so-called Coordination Framework of being under the sway of the ayatollahs in Tehran. Al-Sadr commands a loyal militia that traces back to the US Iraq War, when he led a Shi’a insurgency on behalf of Iran that killed hundreds of American soldiers.

Al-Sadr is the son of revered cleric Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadeq al-Sadr, who was a spiritual guide to Iraqi Shiites. Although he is a cleric, al-Sadr is not at the level of an ayatollah who can act as a spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiite majority, and instead became the leader of the “Sadrist” social movement and a politician in post-war Iraq. Although formerly a close ally of Iran, where he spent years in study and shelter from the United States and his opponents, al-Sadr has butted heads several times with his former benefactors, especially since the ISIS years, when Iran directly armed, funded and trained a bevvy of Shi’a militias to confront the Sunni terrorist group, thereby diminishing al-Sadr’s influence. After the Iranian-sponsored militias, known as Popular Mobilization Units (PMU’s, or Hashd al-Shabi in Arabic) were matriculated into the official Iraqi Security Forces in 2017, al-Sadr turned his contempt of foreign influence towards Iran, claiming that the ayatollahs in Tehran were attempting to co-opt Baghdad.

After al-Sadr failed to form a majority government in early 2022, he instead announced that his entire bloc of 73 parliamentarians would resign from the government, in an attempt to trigger a political crisis. Instead, the Iraqi parliament simply swore in the runner-ups from all 73 districts that al-Sadr’s party won in the previous election, a move which enraged al-Sadr and prompted his followers to storm the Green Zone and occupy the parliament building several times in August. Although brazen and provocative, the protests were not violent. However, that changed on Monday August 29, after the man who acted as the spiritual advisor for al-Sadr, Kadhim al-Haeri, resigned from his position as an ayatollah, and encouraged Iraq’s Shiites to follow the guidance of Iran’s leader, Supreme Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Al-Sadr interpreted the unprecedented move as a power play from Iran and tweeted that he had resigned from Iraqi politics altogether. His supporters flooded the Green Zone in the heart of Baghdad, provoking the Iraqi government and pro-Iranian militias, who fired on them, killing dozens. Al-Sadr’s militia responded with violence, and residents of Baghdad awoke on Tuesday, August 30, to machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades in the capital. One journalist described the violence: “For the average Iraqi who was living through that night of terror, it really felt like going back to the war, in which there was the constant sound of gunfire throughout the night.”

Surprisingly, Muqtada al-Sadr made a televised address at noon on Tuesday, August 30th, condemning the violence and directing his followers to withdraw within an hour, even condemning to hell those of his own militia who had killed fellow Iraqis. Based on journalistic interviews of those in the Iraqi Shi’a community, it appears that al-Sadr was chastened by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leading Shi’a cleric in Iraq, who ordered al-Sadr to stop the violence immediately. Although al-Sadr’s address quelled the violence in Baghdad on Tuesday, conflict continued in Iraq’s Shi’a-majority provinces through Thursday, where pro-Iranian militias clashed with Sadrist militias in the port city of Basra, killing four.

Iraq’s parliament responded to last week’s violence by inviting all political parties to the negotiating table and offering to appease al-Sadr’s demands for snap parliamentary elections, with the speaker of parliament calling for elections to be held before the end of 2023.

Although the immediate threat to Iraq’s government appears to be diverted, Iraq is still in a precarious position. Unpredictable and mercurial personalities like Muqtada al-Sadr threaten to plunge the fragile nation into the abyss of civil war. We ask the Maranatha global family to join us in intercession for peace and political dialog in Iraqi society, for divine wisdom to be granted to Iraqi leadership and Western allies, and for the present political crisis to open “wide, effectual doors” for Good News in the heart of Iraq.

Maranatha.