Security and Politics

The current fighting in Iraq was almost inevitable. The new political process we are putting in place is based on elections, and those who know that they are going to lose them have every reason to disrupt that process. The Sunni radicals and the Shiite rebel leader Moqtada al-Sadr realize that their only hope of achieving power is by resorting to force. It is hardly surprising that they are cooperating with each other, since a combined effort gives them their best shot at prevailing in a test of arms.

The more troubling confrontation is with al-Sadr, the 30-year-old son of the late, respected Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr. His followers are fanatical but few in number. Stymied politically, al-Sadr has built up his militia, the Jaysh al-Mahdi, or the Mahdi army. They are little more than thugs. In March, the Mahdi army drove out all the residents of Qawliya—a village rumored to be a red-light district—and used a bulldozer to knock down their homes. Another tactic of theirs is to throw acid in the faces of scarf-less women and to threaten those who open women’s centers.

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Patrick Clawson

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The current fighting in Iraq was almost inevitable. The new political process we are putting in place is based on elections, and those who know that they are going to lose them have every reason to disrupt that process. The Sunni radicals and the Shiite rebel leader Moqtada al-Sadr realize that their only hope of achieving power is by resorting to force. It is hardly surprising that they are cooperating with each other, since a combined effort gives them their best shot at prevailing in a test of arms.

The more troubling confrontation is with al-Sadr, the 30-year-old son of the late, respected Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr. His followers are fanatical but few in number. Stymied politically, al-Sadr has built up his militia, the Jaysh al-Mahdi, or the Mahdi army. They are little more than thugs. In March, the Mahdi army drove out all the residents of Qawliya—a village rumored to be a red-light district—and used a bulldozer to knock down their homes. Another tactic of theirs is to throw acid in the faces of scarf-less women and to threaten those who open women’s centers.