By Michael Georgy and Ahmed Rasheed
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Populist Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, once a mercurial outlaw wanted dead or alive during the U.S. occupation, rose to become a political kingmaker and Iraq’s most powerful figure.
But even with his unmatched influence, Sadr could not end a prolonged stalemate over forming a government, prompting him to tell his Sadrist bloc in parliament to resign in June.
On Monday, Sadr said he was quitting politics and closing his institutions because of the intractable political deadlock, raising the prospect of more instability in Iraq.
“I hereby announce my final withdrawal,” he wrote on Twitter, criticising fellow Shi’ite political leaders for failing to heed his calls for reform.
Sadr, a staunch opponent of both Iran and the United States who has made political comebacks in the past after withdrawing, wields huge clout with hundreds of thousands of followers who have proved ready to heed his calls to take to the streets.
He was virtually unknown beyond Iraq before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. But he soon became a symbol of resistance to occupation, deriving much of his authority from his family.
Sadr is the son of revered Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, who was assassinated in 1999 after openly criticising then-dictator Saddam Hussein. His father’s cousin, Mohammed Baqir, was also killed by Saddam, in 1980.
“His family legacy – without it I don’t think he could be where he is today,” said Randa Slim, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
Despite the risks, Sadr never fled Iraq, unlike other prominent figures in post-Saddam governments who returned from exile in Iran and the West following the invasion.
TAUNTING SADDAM
When Saddam was executed in 2006, convicted of killing 148 people in a mainly Shi’ite Muslim town a quarter of a century earlier, witnesses taunted him by chanting Moqtada’s name as he was led to the gallows, leaked footage showed.
Sadr was the first to form a Shi’ite militia that fought U.S. troops. He led two anti-U.S. revolts, prompting the Pentagon to call his Mehdi Army militia the biggest threat to Iraq’s security.
In 2004, the U.S. occupation authority issued an arrest warrant and said it would kill or capture Sadr in connection with the 2003 murder of moderate Shi’ite leader Abdul Majid al-Khoei, who the Americans had brought into the holy Shi’ite city of Najaf during the invasion.
Sadr, who denied any role in Khoei’s killing, survived the upheaval in the 19 years since his Mehdi Army took on the U.S. military with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades in the alleys and streets of Baghdad and southern cities.
His followers also fought the Iraqi army, Islamic State militants and rival Shi’ite militias.
In Iraq’s sectarian 2006-2008 civil war, the Mehdi Army was accused of forming death squads that kidnapped and killed Sunni Muslims. Sadr has disavowed violence against fellow Iraqis.
In 2008, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi’ite and long-time rival of Sadr, ordered a major offensive that crushed the Mehdi Army in the southern city of Basra.
Later that year, Sadr ordered a halt to armed operations and declared the Mehdi Army would be transformed into a cultural and social organisation. He renamed it the Peace Brigades.
POLITICAL REINVENTION
He then entered Iraq’s byzantine politics, gaining more popularity by promising to stamp out rampant state corruption.
With his trademark turban, the self-proclaimed champion of the dispossessed could mobilise vast crowds on the streets.
In 2016, Sadr’s supporters stormed parliament inside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone after he denounced the failure to reform a political quota system blamed for rampant graft because political leaders used it to appoint supporters in key jobs.
He ordered his faithful to end their sit-in at the gates of the Green Zone after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi presented a new cabinet lineup meant to fight corruption.
Sadr rebranded himself before parliamentary elections in 2018, forming an alliance with Communists and secularists.
After being sidelined for years by Shi’ite rivals backed by Iran, he emerged victorious in a remarkable comeback, gaining control of ministries and civil service positions.
Sadr has tapped into public resentment with his former ally Iran, telling Tehran he would “not leave Iraq in its grip”, while also calling for the departure of the 2,500 U.S. troops that remain on Iraqi soil.
As the only Shi’ite leader to challenge both Tehran and Washington, he won over swathes of the population, more than half of whom are Shi’tes. Many feel Iraq has not benefited from their government’s close ties either Iran or the United States.
Iraq has been a proxy battleground for influence between the United States and Iran since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam and also created a path to power for the Shi’ite majority, led by figures courted for decades by Tehran.
Most of Iraq’s Shi’ite political establishment remains suspicious or even hostile to Sadr. But the Sadrist movement has come to dominate the state apparatus since the 2018 poll, taking top jobs in the interior, defence and communications ministries.
His movement swept elections in 2021, coming first and winning 73 seats in the 329-seat parliament, up from 54. It dealt a crushing blow to pro-Iranian Shi’ite groups. Sadr declared it a “victory by the people over … militias”.
(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Michael Georgy; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by William Maclean and Edmund Blair)
