Shiite struggle in Iraq may be key to U.S. troop extension
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BAGHDAD -- A pledge last week by Iraq's Shiite prime minister to seek consensus on whether U.S. troops should stay or go came with a not-so-subtle challenge to an influential fellow Shiite.
If a solid majority of Iraq's main political blocs decide to back a U.S. presence beyond a year-end deadline, Nouri al-Maliki said, then even the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr should abandon plans for renewed violence and fall in line.
"That is the mechanism of democracy," Mr. Maliki said.
His remarks carried an implicit threat: If Mr. Sadr crosses Mr. Maliki's ultimate decision on the U.S. troops question, he risks a repeat of the prime minister's 2008 order sending the Iraqi army to crush Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.
"Maliki's comments cannot be read as anything other than a direct political challenge to Sadr," said J. Scott Carpenter, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state during Mr. Sadr's rise and most violent clashes with U.S. forces. "The basic agreement that led to the governing coalition -- that allowed Sadr to throw his support behind Maliki -- is now breaking down."
That fragile alliance reached in the fall between Mr. Maliki and Mr. Sadr was predicated, Sadrists say, on their fellow Shiite following through on a 3-year-old U.S.-Iraqi agreement that calls for all American forces to leave the country by Dec. 31.
With the Maliki-Sadr relationship fast approaching a tipping point, the firebrand cleric wasted no time Friday in responding to Mr. Maliki's challenge.
For the first time since returning to Iraq after nearly four years of self-imposed exile in Iran, Mr. Sadr took to the pulpit and delivered an unannounced sermon at Friday prayers in his southern stronghold of Najaf.
In a forceful political message that prefaced his religious sermon, Mr. Sadr employed some of his strongest language yet against a U.S. troop extension.
"We appeal to all Iraqi people to expel the U.S. troops from Iraq through demonstrations and marches," he said. "We will not accept the occupation's troops staying, not even for one day after the end of this year."
But after the sermon, Mr. Sadr returned to the troop issue and hinted for the first time that he might not necessarily renew armed resistance.
If all of Iraq's political blocs decide to support a U.S. troop extension, he said, he may reevaluate whether to lift a 2008 order halting attacks by his militia.
First Published May 15, 2011 12:00 am
