The Wild Card

By Bobby Ghosh

Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi'ite leader, doesn't like to miss out on the action. As Iraq convulsed in sectarian violence last week, al-Sadr was stuck in Beirut, on the final leg of a grand tour of Middle Eastern capitals. He was being feted by heads of state across the region, a remarkable achievement for a politician-cleric who has neither been elected to any office nor completed his religious education. After hearing news of the destruction of the Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, al-Sadr cut his trip short to return to Iraq to marshal his Mahdi Army, a militia of bristling young Shi'ites who had swarmed the streets, torching Sunni mosques and girding for war. But a government-imposed curfew had closed airports and sealed borders, leaving al-Sadr locked out. His mood was surly. An aide told TIME that when he tried to brief al-Sadr on talks over the formation of Iraq's new government, he snapped, "The government can go to hell."

Damning Iraq's political process comes easy to a man who more than once has pushed it to the edge of the precipice. But these days al-Sadr is part of the process: in December's general elections, his candidates won 32 seats, giving him a decisive voting bloc in the 128-member Shi'ite alliance that dominates the new parliament. But unlike most other Iraqi leaders, al-Sadr commands a genuine popular following, which is why the surge of violence is likely to give him even more influence over the country's future.

To a substantial extent, the prospects of averting a full-blown civil war will depend on how al-Sadr chooses to deploy his militia--as a revenge-seeking lynch mob or as enforcers of Shi'ite restraint. Because of his popularity with the Shi'ite masses, any effort to broker a cease-fire between the sects and form a durable Iraqi government that can contain the violence will require his active cooperation. It's an indication of how badly things are going for the Bush Administration that its hopes are pinned to a man implacably hostile toward the U.S.--and whose supporters were, barely two years ago, fighting U.S. troops on his orders. "We're going to have to hold our noses when we do business with this guy," says a Western adviser to the Iraqi government. "And he's going to enjoy watching us squirm."

That's fine with everyone, as long as al-Sadr keeps his shock troops in check. In the immediate aftermath of the Samarra bombing, he was hearteningly subdued, ordering his followers to refrain from attacking Sunnis. After having participated in the orgy of anti-Sunni violence in the 24 hours following the attack, al-Sadr's fighters gradually responded to their leader's call. In a few places, his supporters were even credited with protecting Sunni mosques. For the more optimistic observers, those events seemed to confirm the notion that it is better to have al-Sadr inside the Iraqi political tent, trying to hold it up, than to leave him outside, threatening to put it to the torch. "This shows that Muqtada is a constructive force in politics," says Salah al-Obeidi, a senior al-Sadr aide. "This is the act of a responsible Iraqi leader."

For U.S. officials, that remains a tough line to swallow. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, al-Sadr's behavior has ranged from irritating to intolerable. Details of al-Sadr's personal life are a closely guarded secret: he is thought to be in his mid-30s. He is married and has children, although his aides won't disclose how many. He bears a name revered by Shi'ites all over the world: al-Sadr's father and uncle were influential and popular ayatullahs murdered by Saddam's regime. Muqtada was a virtual unknown in Iraq until the U.S. invasion, after which he began building his power base through often ruthless means: his supporters were blamed for the April 2003 assassination in Najaf of an influential pro-Western ayatullah. (The U.S. initially fingered al-Sadr for the murder, then quietly let the matter drop. Al-Sadr has denied any involvement in the murder.)

In the first half of 2004, he became a nationalist hero to many Iraqis after leading two armed uprisings against U.S. forces. His Mahdi Army is made up of thousands of poor Shi'ites, the majority of whom live in a densely populated Baghdad suburb that bears al-Sadr's family name. Little more than rabble, the Mahdi Army was no match for U.S. troops, but at least 29 American service members were killed in battles with al-Sadr's forces.

Al-Sadr has moderated his image by embracing elections and joining the political process. But in the two months since Iraq's general election, he has shown he will be a disruptive figure in the heart of any new government. He scuttled a plan that would have replaced Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari--who is widely distrusted by Sunnis--with the more acceptable Adil Abdul Mahdi, and his refusal to deal with secular politicians like former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has confounded U.S. attempts to nudge the Shi'ites to form a national unity government. "We did our best to bring [al-Sadr] into the political process," says Redha Jawad Taqi, a senior leader of SCIRI, the largest Shi'ite party. "But [the Sadrists] believe wrong things about democracy."

The biggest concern for many Iraqis is al-Sadr's unwillingness to disarm the Mahdi Army militia, which has a long record of inflammatory and often criminal behavior. In areas where al-Sadr's fighters hold sway, they use brute force to impose a strict Islamic code. They are frequently accused of kidnapping and assassinating those who resist them. Many Mahdi Army fighters have been absorbed into the Iraqi security forces and police, and in the aftermath of the Samarra bombing, many police vehicles in Baghdad were openly flying Mahdi Army colors--black and green. Sunni groups say policemen did nothing to stop the violence last week. In some places, they claim, policemen joined the mobs to kill Sunnis and defile their mosques.

But al-Sadr does have one potential trump card: his strident anti-Americanism has helped him broaden his support base, so that many Iraqi Sunnis regard him as the only Shi'ite leader they can trust. Sunni groups contributed men and material to support the Mahdi Army's uprisings against U.S. forces, and elements of the Mahdi Army fought alongside Sunni insurgents in the battle of Fallujah in fall 2004. "He is somebody who has fought against the occupying forces," says Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, the leading Sunni clerical body. "All other Shi'ite leaders are seen as collaborators because they cooperate with the Americans." Al-Sadr stayed true to form after the Samarra bombing, lacing his statement with an angry condemnation of the "Crusaders" and demands for their withdrawal from Iraq. If al-Sadr can prevent the chaos in Iraq from turning into civil war, there's good reason the U.S. might even oblige.

With reporting by Christopher Allbritton/Baghdad