The End of Al-Sadr

In late summer 2003, I was living in Birmingham and every morning I used to go to its central library studying for my English language test. And one day in the Learning Centre I met a Sri Lankan young man, who was desperately trying, like me, to pass the language exam in order to find a job in his profession, Civil Engineering. I introduced myself as an Iraqi doctor, and once he heard the word “Iraqi” he was excitedly thrilled and admiringly said “Ohhh Iraq…Fallujah…Muqtada Al-Sadr”. Over the next few days I realised that my new friend knew nothing about Iraq apart from these two words “ Fallujah and Muqtada Al-Sadr” and of course “ Saddam” and he adamantly believed that the “Mujahidin of Fallujah and Muqtada are going to liberate Iraq from the American and British invaders”. I did not argue with him at that time and will not if I see him again.

I passed my exam and moved down to London and two days ago I read in the CBS news website that:
“The U.S. military spokesman in Iraq said on Wednesday that all indications showed that radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr remained in Iranian exile as of 24 hours ago”

I immediately remembered my old friend and whether he still accepts as true that Muqtada is capable of “liberating Iraq”. This incident took me again to the complex Iraqi situation and “Al-Sadr” phenomenon and its implications on the current circumstances and the future of Iraq. Nearly at the same time I was in contact with
A close friend, who I really respect his ideas and thoughts. He believes that we, Iraqis, can not live without a dictator and if we have not one, we will create it ourselves and I think many Iraqis share with him this opinion as a fact. I personally disagree with this view; however, it is very difficult to defend my case when it comes to Al-Sadr. There is no doubt that his rise after the demise of Saddam’s regime was unexpected for the Americans and most Iraqis as well. the collapse of the state and the resultant political vacuum set the stage for Al-Sadr Phenomenon to breed and flourish. On the other hand, most Shia Ulama kept silent or distanced themselves from the political life in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. Al-Sadr played on the strings of National Islamism and resistance against the occupation in addition to the legacy of his family that he inherited from his father Mohamed Sadiq Al-Sadr. The charity network established by his father continued providing services at times when all government ministries was non- functioning. Other factors were involved as well, most importantly, the elimination of other rival Shia clerics from the political scene like Abdul-Majid Al-Khoei (brutally murdered by close aides of Al-Sadr himself) and later Mohamed Baqir Al-Hakim (killed in a massive car bomb that Al-Qaeda claimed its responsibility). Leading two uprisings against the Americans in 2004 and opposing the political process at first and the idea of “federalising” Iraq, all these moves won him the support of the Iraqi Arab Sunnis and the wider Sunni Islamic world all backed by a very influential anti-American, national and Islamic-oriented, Al-Jazeera-like medias. But that was not going to last very long and I personally believe that we are now witnessing the downfall of Muqtada and his shambled movement. Certainly many Iraqis, especially those inside Iraq, disagree with this opinion, but considering the developments in Iraq over the last year since the destruction of Samara shrines, all refer to the fact that Al-Sadr movement is not as strong as it was two years earlier.

1. The United Shia Alliance is currently divided and its integrity is threatened. The row over appointing Al-Maliki as prime minister and most recently the withdrawal of Al-Fadhila Party of his 20 members from the alliance proved that the rifts among its different groups could no longer be ignored.
2. The unprecedented wave of sectarian violence that engulfed the country after the destruction of the shrines, in many of its ugly faces, was linked to Al-Sadr movement. His militias and death squads were responsible for taking lives of many Sunnis in retaliation to the unrestrained killing of Shias by suicide and car bombings. As a result, he no longer enjoyed the support of Sunni Arabs in Iraq or in the wider Muslim world.
3. Al-Sadr himself lacks the skills and the charisma required to lead a popular political movement. Unlike Khomeini and Nassruallah, He does not have the spiritual “halo” and even the basic theological and linguistic skill that enable him to maintain his position among his followers.
4. The pressure exerted by the Americans on the Iraqi Government, and particularly on Al-Maliki, to discontinue the his support to Muqtada and his movement, significantly narrowed the political space available for them (Muqtada and his followers) to work within and exploit it as they did before.
5. The success of the current Baghdad security plan, although very limited, was to a great extent due to the capture (e.g. Abdulhadi Al-Daraji) and killing (e.g. Sahib Al-Amri) of many aides of Al-Sadr and Jaish al-Mahdi leaders. Others, including Muqtada himself, fled to Iran. In addition, they avoided any confrontation, political or military with the American forces. This changed the belief of many people about the reality of Al-Sadr’s intentions and his movement’s ability to “liberate” Iraq from occupation.

But the most crucial factor that determines the future of Al-Sadr and his movement is the relation with Iran. There are several clues that he has links with different centres of power in Iran. On one hand, adopting a hard line political Shia Islamic views with anti-American sentiments serve the Iranian interests, but on the other hand, backing the democratic process endorsed by the Americans will also leave Iran as the main beneficiary, as any free elections will bring the majority Shia of Iraq to power. I personally think that Iran tried to transform Al-Sadr movement to an Iraqi version of the Lebanese Hizbullah and so far this has failed. Also In the current international isolation of the Iranian regime, Iran is trying to open direct and indirect channels of communications with the Americans and the West in general in a desperate attempt to avoid the political, economic and may be military consequences of its hard position on sensitive issues like the nuclear power, the expanding Iranian influence in the region and most importantly its involvement in Iraq. Al-Sadr is not the right choice for such a mission. Alternatively, it seems that Iran now works with Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim and his Iranian-born SCIRI to do the required job. For the above reasons, I believe that Al-Sadr chances in the future Iraq are minimal and his influence will be limited. This proves the fact that the adopting a Shia identity on its own and trying to rule a country with a mentality of retaliation for hundreds of years of oppression will never lead to build a new free and stable Iraq. Hizb Al-Da’wa failed before and Al-Sadr too now. Our common “Iraqiness” identity is the only way to take the country and its people out of its hellish situation.

A Nation overwhelmed by mass exodus

Blighted by sectarian violence, insurgency, occupation and corruption, Iraq left no hope for its people to have the least basic right ensured by humanity law, the right to survive. The most accurate description of the current situation in Iraq came from Baker-Hamilton Report “ the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. There is no path that can guarantee success” but the White House and the Iraqi government are still in denial. Two months after the release of the Baker-Hamilton Report, the UNHCR admitted that the mass exodus of Iraqis driven by violence out of Iraq is catastrophic and the hosting countries can no longer cope with and asked the International Community to intervene and provide financial assistance. Despite being considered as the second biggest wave of migration in the Middle East over the last one hundred years (the Palestinian refugees in 1948 represent the first largest wave), it is not the first one in modern Iraqi history.

In modern Iraqi history, the Jewish Community was the first ring in a chain of successive waves of migration and deportation campaigns reluctant to stop sixty years later. Considered as one of the oldest and most thriving and influential communities in Iraq, the Iraqi Jews constituted approximately 30-35% of Baghdad population in the first decade of the twentieth century. Within ten years (1941 – 1951), the Jews of Iraq were forced to leave the land they lived on for nearly three thousand years. Most of their assets were confiscated or frozen and many prominent figures of their community were humiliatingly arrested, detained and executed for false and fabricated accusations of being spies to Israel. In 2007, the Jewish Community in Iraq was reduced to a group of 10-30 people only.

The second wave of migration that played an important role in reshaping the demographic structure of most Iraqi cities, particularly Baghdad, was the internal displacement of tens of thousands of poor farmers and villagers from Southern Iraqi countryside to Baghdad. The majority were Shia Arabs from the tribes scattered in the Southern provinces of Ammara and Nassiriyah. It started in mid thirties of the last century but intensified during the forties and fifties. By that time they represented a significant section of the Baghdadi Community with their tribal traditions and customs and lived in slums on the outskirts of Baghdad. They are referred to, humiliatingly, as “Shargawi”, “Shragwa” or “Shroogie” (Sharg in Iraqi slang language means Sharqh which means East in English, and Shargawi means the one who is originally came from the east). In the first two years after Qasim’s Revolution in 1958, the Government finally paid attention to their plight and built around 10,000 houses, several hospitals and schools and proper sewage system and from that time it was known as Al-Thawra City. In mid eighties, its name was changed to Saddam’s city and it was only changed in 2003 to AlSadr City, which I think will stick with it for the next few generations.

With the significant changes implemented by 1958 Revolution, a third wave migration was in process but on much smaller scale as compared to the previous two ones mentioned above. This time it consisted of remaining members of the monarch family and the close circle of elites surrounded them. Big landowners and others whom the new changes adversely affected their prestigious positions. Not so long after and From 1963 until early seventies, Iraqi Communists fled Iraq and take refugee in Eastern Europe and other countries after a brutal campaign by the Ba’athists who came to power in February 1963. This time Iraq was stripped off its intellectual and educated people who for decades shaped most of the Iraqi cultural and educational scenes. This continued throughout the 70s after the collapse of the Front formed with the Ba’athists and continued until early eighties when the leftist movements in Iraq were almost purged. During the seventies, other groups were also targeted and many had no option left but to flee Iraq, mainly Shia’a Islamists (Al-Da'wa Party members) and found refuge in neighbouring countries mainly Syria and Iran.

If you look at the above five examples, we will be able to classify the motives behind these waves of displacement as follows:
Jews of Iraq – Religious identity.
Internal migration from the South to Baghdad- Economic reasons.
Immediately after the 1958 Revolution- Class identity as it represented the group that had access to most of the financial resources and have links (tribal/ clannish/ Family intermarriages) that augmented their positions in the kingdom era.
The Communists (Political identity)
The Islamists (Politico-Religious-Sectarian)

It is very difficult to find other countries in the ME that experienced such different kinds of migration waves within a short time frame (approximately 40 years). It may share some similarities with the situation in Iran and Egypt but if we compare the population number in these two countries with relevant figures in Iraq we will have a clear idea about the depth of the crack that have been left in the fabric of the Iraqi society. And in early nineties, after two catastrophic wars with Iran (1980-1988) and with the whole world (1991), it was obvious that Iraq (the people and the culture) was vulnerable, fragmented and divided with its sects irrevocably hostile to each other. In order to understand the characteristics of the following waves of mass migration, it is easier to put them in two different categories:

From 1990-2003 (Sanctions on Iraq):
If we were able to identify the main reasons behind the previous displacements, this time it is very difficult and complicated situation where myriad of factors characterised its nature, which can only be, described as Iraqi-labelled mass exodus.
It was much larger than the previous waves.
Involved all sects of the Iraqi Community, Arabs and Kurds (and other ethnic minorities), Muslims and Christians (and other religious minorities), Shia’s and Sunnis.
All economic classes of the society. Poor, middle and affluent classes.
Secular and religious sections.
Illiterate, basic literacy skills, educated and high professions.
And most importantly, their aims were much more different- for most of Iraqis who left Iraq during this period, they wanted to achieve a complete detachment from Iraq and no will to return and desperately trying in all means to gain new identities (particularly from the affluent European countries and America). It was one-way journey for the majority of us. Not merely a physical one but mental, social and psychological).
From 2003-
With the American occupation, toppling of Saddam’s regime, collapse of the state and its frail institutions, the rise of violent political Islamism (the Wahabi-Salafi and the Shia’a versions), the plight cut deep wounds in an already fragmented society. The current mass exodus is almost similar to the 1990s wave but this time it represents the biggest displacement ever in Iraqi history and the first and most fundamental motive behind it was the right to survive and be away from fears of being killed by a roadside bomb, a suicide explosion, death squads, sectarian violence and fire power by trigger-happy American soldiers.

This subject opened the door for many unanswered questions: will this be the end of the Iraqi Mass Exodus? Do we think that in the future we will witness larger waves than the one we see now? What is going to be the fate of millions of Iraqis live now in exile? And if we agree that we expect the worst, what will be the main identities of future displacements? For how long the hollowed and shattered Iraqi personality can handle the Iraqi identity complex?
These questions and many others are buzzing in my head and I am searching desperately for answers.

The Police Man from an Iraqi perspective

The Police Man from an Iraqi perspective

I was invited for a meeting discussing the multiple complicated aspects of the current situation in Iraq. This meeting was sponsored by the British Defence Academy and was attended by high-Profile British political and military figures, civil servants, journalists and academics interested and/or involved in Iraqi affairs. There were around twenty people there with five Iraqis only

As the discussion went on, the issue of Iraqi Police force came out and the invited guests, especially those who served in Basra expressed their concerns about the competence of Iraqi police to deal with the present situation and their ability to provide security. The points that have been highlighted by the guests were true. However; most of them seemed to lack the knowledge of the social dimensions, already known by ordinary Iraqis, about “Iraqi Police Phenomenon” (I personally think that we have a unique kind of Police force unlikely to be found in other areas on this planet).

Unlike the Army, being a police man in Iraq is not a highly respected job. In fact it has a bad reputation and for decades the posts for police men were filled by people from low socio-economic classes, most of them are illiterate or with very basic literacy capabilities. The majority of them are from the countryside or from families that have migrated for different political/economical reasons from the countryside to the cities hoping for better life. This background created a complex personality that bears all the seeds of contradictions (class clashes, inferiority complex, tribal vs. civil traditions, lost identity…etc)within it and this to a large extent was obvious in their performance not only recently but since the days of the monarchy.

We Iraqis know what does “Abu-Isma’il” and “washer” mean but unfortunately most Westerners do not have an idea about them. For decades the Iraqi Police force is known to be one of the biggest organizations in Iraq plagued by corruption and bribery. Since the monarchy era, the Iraqi police was not trusted by Iraqis and if we have a look at the history of the clandestine opposition parties in the 40s and 50s Iraq, we will notice that they focussed their attention and efforts on the Army for a hope of change rather than on the police. Police was seen by most Iraqis as agents and tools in the hands of the government rather than a force its top priority is to provide security to ordinary people. Older Iraqis will tell you a lot about the bad reputation of Bahjat Al-Attiyah and his secret police system in late forties and fifties. Most of Iraqis remember the notorious Samir Al-Shaikhly, who once appointed as minister of Interior in mid-eighties. I still remember police cars (were Mercedes first but later replaced by newer Oldsmobile Chevrolets) patrolling the streets of Baghdad in search for teenagers and young people wearing “western style Jeans, necklaces and T-shirts with English words written on them” or putting headphones. They usually detain them for few hours, slightly insult them and they give them advice about what to wear in a conservative society like Iraq. We grew up with these fears from the Police force and we still haunted by these images even in our exiles in the West.

Until now I do not feel comfortable when I see a police man walking on the street here in London and always try to cross the street to be away from them. In the first few days of my arrival here in Britain I saw two police officers, a man and a woman, walking in the Hyde Park with Mars chocolate bars in their hands immediately smiling if your eyes come across theirs. Unfortunately, this is the picture that most of the British or the Americans had first in their minds when they hoped to build the Iraqi Police Force. But the reality is completely different from these great expectations and it is a very difficult task to change the image inscribed on the Iraqi mind about their Police force. But what is the best solution to solve the problem of building a decent and competent Iraqi Police force. I regrettably do not know.

The Flag: is it really a symbol of patriotism?

Finally I have settled “legally” in this country after four years of exhausting struggle with the immigration department, and their decision opened new hopes for a better and hopefully stable life for me and my wife. In fact it is a new start and a new challenge. At the same day of hearing these good news I have received my first present from a close relative. As a joke, she gave me the British flag and immediately I realised that from now on a new identity is going to be added to my more or less lost identities that I used to live with as Iraqi for thirty six years now. With the ongoing chaos and anarchy in Iraq at the present, I do not see the Iraqi flag represent our confused, blurred and contradicting identities. Carrying an Iraqi flag now will not give a clue if you are Arab or Kurd, Sunni or Shi’a’ or if you are from other minority groups. These ethnic, religious and sectarian identities have been revived and prevailed and left no space for a common Iraqi identity shared by Iraqis and represented by one flag.

Whenever the issue of the Iraqi flag come out, it reminds me of football and death. When I was a child in the seventies, I still remember the huge crowds carrying Iraqi flags waving in “AlSha’ab” stadium in support of our national football team. Our team by that time was in its heydays and we were all united behind him. The same scenes were repeated in the eighties but with big differences. The same crowds carrying the same flag but with Saddam’s and Uday’s posters. The message was clear. Our Iraqi identity is not only represented by our flag but also by our president and his dynasty. And if there is one thing defining the eighties’ Iraq, it would be its war with Iran. This devastatingly gruesome war that lasted for eight bloody years with its heavy death tolls on both sides of the conflict. I was nine year old when the war started and I still remember the raising-of-the-flag ceremony carried out every Thursday morning in all schools all over Iraq and I can not forget a man called Tareef, who lives in our street and used to be known by all the neighbours for being an agent working for the brutal general security apparatus in Iraq. This man was chosen by the local Ba’ath Party Organization to attend these sermons and fire bullets in the sky from his Kalashinkoff as we all witness in silence and fear our flag been raised and stood high in the sky in the middle of our small school’s courtyard and then we all start chanting our national anthem. From that time I began to realise that there is a close relationship between our flag and death and year after year this link became more obvious when I discovered that the Iraqi tanks that smashed the uprising in the South and North of Iraq after our defeat in the 1991 war and the airplanes that gassed the Kurrds in the North in 1989 were all labelled with the Iraqi flag.

And if it was for me only a symbol of death and football, the American “Stars & Stripes” came out with many tempting thoughts in my teenage years. Of course it was a sign of pride and patriotism for many Americans, and that was immediately evident in the aftermath of September the 11th. But for me what does it mean? It was on one of my T-shirts that I bought in 1984 from Bab Al-Sharji with a Rugby ball painted on its front and just below it written “U.S.A” in bold letters. It was the Bikinis of group of hot chicks appeared with James Brown in “Rocky IV” series singing proudly “living in America” and also resembled the bravery of “Rambo” and “Arnold” as they triumph over an enemy of hundreds and sometimes thousands without being hurt in a mythical journey not very much different from a legendary lifetime adventure of a hero in a Bollywood movie produced in the 60s and 70s. “Stars & Stripes” at that time represented Nike, McDonalds, Michael Jackson and all the dreams that we were longing to fulfil one day in the future and it was embedded in our deepest minds and touched the sensitive nerves of our teenage years with its hormonal swings.

And now twenty years later what has changed? In the case of the Iraqi flag, nothing I am afraid. It still, for me bears the same symbolism: our unity only when it comes to our national football team and the escalating death tolls in the most dangerous country in the world. But what about the “Star & Stripes”? Well, my mother used the T-Shirt to clean the kitchen table, nothing to do with anti-American feeling. It was only because it got smaller on my growing body size. The heroism of “Rambo” and “Arnold” was in fact disastrous wars in Vietnam and later in Iraq. “Nike” and “McDonald” symbolised the ghoulish nightmare of consumerist society, child and slave labour and destruction of our planet. It was only later to discover that we, Arabs, are not the only ones who burned the American Flag. In late 60s thousands of people marched the streets of Europe and America protesting against the Vietnam War. Keith Emerson ( of the “Nice” and later “Emerson, Lake and Palmer) set ablaze the American flag on stage in the Royal Albert Hall in 1969 the reason that lead to the banning of “The Nice” from performing in The Royal Albert Hall.


After all these distorted, confusing and contradicting images inscribed in our minds about the flag, can we still say that it is a symbol of patriotism? With my new “British” flag present I asked myself: what does it mean for me? It is very difficult to come up with an answer in the near time future.