Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq
by Patrick Cockburn
Summary
Who is Muqtada al-Sadr, and why is he so vital to the future of Iraq and, arguably, the entire Middle East?
In this compellingly readable account, prize-winning journalist Patrick Cockburn tells the story of Muqtada’s rise to become the leader of Iraq’s poor Shi’ites and the resistance to the occupation…. The portrait that emerges is of a complex man and a sophisticated politician, who engages with religious and nationalist aspirations in a manner unlike any other Iraqi leader.
Though it often reads like an adventure story, Muqtada is also a work of painstaking research and measured analysis that leads to a deeper understanding both of one of the most critical conflicts in the world today and of the man who may well be a decisive voice in determining the future of Iraq when the Americans eventually leave.
Excerpt
Chapter Thirteen
The Fall of Najaf
On August 6, 2004, Abbas Fadhel, a twenty-four-year-old member of a Mehdi Army company, volunteered with a group of other fighters in Sadr City to go to Najaf to take part in the second battle for the city. It had started three days earlier, and shells and bombs were beginning to destroy much of central Najaf as U.S. Marines fought their way toward the Imam Ali shrine. Abbas had some military training because “when the Mehdi Army was set up we used to train in the open agricultural countryside on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad and pretend that we were hunting.” In addition, he had fought in the resistance against Saddam Hussein some years earlier in Amara and Nassariya provinces, “so I knew how to use a Kalashnikov and a PKC [Russian-made light machine gun].”
Abbas and his companions, who belonged to Mehdi Army’s Ahmed al-Sheibani company, named after the imprisoned representative of Muqtada in Basra, drove in a car on what is normally a two-hour drive from Baghdad. They could see U.S. aircraft bombing groups of young men traveling in the same direction as themselves on the assumption that they were going to join Muqtada’s forces. The crashes of the explosions unnerved the young men in the car. “Some got out and disappeared into nearby farms or took lifts in passing cars going back to Baghdad,” says Abbas. As they arrived at al-Aoun, a village surrounded by date palms just north of Najaf where Shia insurgents had briefly fought Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard to a standstill in the uprising of 1991, the driver of the car finally lost his nerve. Though he was a follower of Muqtada, he suddenly announced that he was going no farther and was returning to Baghdad. His fear infected others among Abbas’s remaining companions, who took their last chance to avoid fighting in a battle in which they knew they were very likely to die. (These defections are striking because they show that the militiamen in Sadr City were not all fanatical fighters carelessly willing to become martyrs for Muqtada and Islam.)
The flight of the driver left the four remaining members of the party that had set out from Baghdad a few hours earlier standing disconsolately beside the road. “We four walked on foot to the Haidaria region using an unpaved dirt track because we were frightened of the American bombardment,” recalls Abbas. “We came across a small saloon car whose driver said, ‘Get in and I will drive you to Najaf.’ I do not think he was entirely in his right mind, though he was not completely crazy, either. As he drove he kept yelling at people beside the road, saying ‘You are cowards and agents of the occupier.’ We stayed silent and did not speak to him. The situation was very dangerous because we were twice targeted by American snipers and we were very exposed because there were no other cars moving on the roads…
Copyright © 2008 by Patrick Cockburn. Reprinted by permission of Simon and Schuster Inc.
Reviews
“[O]ne of a small handful of books that are required reading for anyone who wants to unravel the meaning of events in Iraq five years into the war”—New York Times
“[A]n invaluable resource for anyone weighing U.S. policy in Iraq”—Publishers Weekly
“Cockburn takes us behind the clichés and half-truths to describe a complicated political operative who will play a huge role in the power struggle that is sure to come"—Seymour Hersh
Author's Biography
Patrick Cockburn was among the very few Western journalists to remain in Baghdad during the Gulf War and has been an intrepid reporter of Iraq ever since.