Sadr Aide Outlines Vision of a U.S.-Free Iraq

Moqtada Al-Sadr – one of Iraq’s fastest-rising young stars – expects to play an important role in the future of his country’s Shia community. The young cleric, often referred to in the Western media as a ‘firebrand,’ has consistently found himself at odds with the U.S.-led occupying forces. This has won him the hearts and minds of a large percentage of Iraq’s Shia community – to the extent that Iraq’s most prominent and influential cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, recently announced that he can no longer control the rising tide of anger that has plunged the capital into a sectarian bloodbath. Al-Sadr seems to have a finger on the pulse of this rising anger and is well positioned to wield considerable influence in the event of an eventual American withdrawal – assuming, of course, that he is still alive at the end of the conflict.

In a shabby but spotless living room in the holy city of Najaf, a top deputy of Shiite Muslim leader Moqtada al-Sadr quietly sketched out his vision of the Iraq to come, after the Americans withdraw.

First, “there will be a civil war,” said the aide, Mustafa Yaqoubi, as his three young children wandered in and out of the room. The rising violence and rivalries under the American occupation make a shaking-out all but inevitable once foreign forces go, Yaqoubi said. “I expect it.”

“No matter the number of people who would lose their lives, it is better than now,” he added. “It would be better than the Americans staying.”

When the tumult ends, the Sadr aide said, Iraq’s Shiite majority will finally be able to claim its due, long resisted by the Americans — freedom to usher in a Shiite religious government that Yaqoubi said would be moderate and perhaps comparable in some ways to Iran’s. The bespectacled, bearded cleric’s mild tone buffered his talk of the blood that would have to be spilled to achieve this goal. No matter when the Americans withdraw, “the first year of transition, it will be worse,” Yaqoubi warned. “After that, it will gradually improve….

Posted by Heatscore
A jaded Raskolnikov waiting in disgust for this sick society's imminent paradigm shift.

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