Sadr-bevegelsen i Irak
Reidar Vissers NUPI-notat “The Sadrists of Basra and the Far South of Iraq. The Most Unpredictable Political Force in the Gulf’s Oil-Belt Region?” omhandler interne spenninger i Sadr-bevegelsen i Irak og hvordan amerikansk politikk kan komme til å påvirke dem.
[Abstract] The argument in this paper is two-fold: on the one hand, the oil-rich
far south of Iraq has a special potential for radical and unpredictable millenarianism
by discontented Sadrists; on the other hand, developments among the Sadrist
leadership nationally suggest that many key figures – including Muqtada al-Sadr
himself and some of his lieutenants with links to Basra – still prefer a more moderate
course and will seek to hold on to a veneer of Shiite orthodoxy as long as possible.
Accordingly, the future of the Sadrist movement, including in the far south,
will likely be decided by how US and Iraqi government policies develop over coming
months. If Washington chooses to support Nuri al-Maliki in an all-out attack
against the Sadrists, the response may well be an intensification of unpredictable
Mahdist militancy in the far south, in a far more full-blown picture than anything
seen so far. There will be no genuine national reconciliation in Baghdad, simply
because the centralism of the Sadrists is a necessary ingredient in any grand compromise
that can appeal to real Sunni representatives. Conversely, if the Sadrists
are encouraged to participate in the next local elections, Amara, where Sadrists
have been engaged in local politics since 2005, could emerge as a model of positive
Sadrist contributions to local politics in Iraq. At the national level, too, the
Sadrists could come to play the same constructive role as that seen in February
2008, when they together with Fadila reached out to Sunni Islamists and secularists
to challenge the paralysed Maliki government on a nationalist basis by demanding
early provincial elections.