When a man like Moqtada Al Sadr bows out of politics, it is natural for questions to be asked. When he does so weeks before a parliamentary election, in a political environment as tangled as Iraq’s, such questions can have serious implications.
Mr Al Sadr is, to put it mildly, a complicated figure, and a brutal one at that. He is the man the United States couldn’t kill, who led a militia opposed to America’s occupation of Iraq, but who survived, thrived, and then vanished to Iran for four years. He is a man who lives in the shadow of his father, Ayatollah Muhammed Sadiq Al Sadr, a prominent cleric and critic of Saddam Hussein, who was murdered by the former dictator. Mr Al Sadr’s stronghold on the outskirts of Baghdad, Sadr City, is named after his father, and his supporters judge him in comparison.
Less learned in religious matters, but very skilled in the dark arts of politics. It was Mr Al Sadr who, through his Mahdi Army, pushed a nakedly sectarian agenda in Iraq, especially after the 2006 bombing of the Al Askari Mosque in Samarra, one of the most holy to Shiites. At the same time, he has, on occasion, tried to reach beyond his Shia constituency and build political bridges to the marginalised Sunni Iraqis: he struck a deal with the Sunni-dominated Iraqiya party last year, and, when the restive province of Anbar erupted in violence earlier this year, he suggested their demands were “legitimate” and should be met.
And yet despite Mr Al Sadr’s violent past and erratic politics, his departure is bad for Iraqi politics and bad for Iraq. That’s because his Sadrist movement was the one Shia movement that could challenge prime minister Nouri Al Maliki for the votes of the majority Shia community. With two Shia parties fighting for influence, there was always an opportunity for one of them to reach out to the Sunni community, in order to gain more votes.
But with Mr Al Sadr gone, his movement will be severely weakened, leaving Mr Al Maliki’s State of Law party as the main political group for the Shia. That means that Mr Al Maliki – already a man happy to divide and rule along Iraq’s fragile sectarian lines – only has to shore up his Shia community to win votes. The Sunnis, already marginalised, can now be ignored – a sure recipe for disaster, for more violence, and for greater sectarian tensions. There will be few outside his constituency who will be sad to see the back of Mr Al Sadr. And yet his departure might be worse for Iraq than his presence.
