I ran into a Tibetan friend yesterday. He came to this country from a Tibetan refugee community in Northern India. He told me about watching satellite television with his family and seeing protests all over the South Asian channels. Protests over the Saddam Hussein execution. "He is a martyr now for sure," my friend told me gravely.
I did a survey on google and quickly found stories about protests all over the Muslim world, in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Tunisia and Pakistan. Some of the protests were huge. I also found references to articles in two Arab dailies about Moqtada al-Sadr's presence at the execution. Having seen the two images that Mash posted in his diary, "Moqtada al-Sadr at Saddam's Hanging?", I decided further investigation was warranted. Specifically, as means and opportunity weren't big questions, I wanted to establish motive. This was much easier to accomplish than I had anticipated.
More on this sad and sordid tale after the jump
As the story goes, according to two Arab dailies, al-Riadh and al-Watan, which quote unnamed eyewitnesses, Shiite Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was one of the masked executioners at Saddam Hussein's execution. Moqtada al-Sadr is said to have asked premier Nuri al-Maliki, as a condition for remaining in the government, to be personally allowed to see Saddam killed before the end of the year.
This story seemed a little farfetched to me before I saw the pictures. How could Maliki take such a risk? And, I couldn't find the original articles, only translations. All of the stories on this identify one of the papers as al-Riadh, when it seems that they mean Al Riyadh. But research I did today, makes this assertion more plausible. It also suggests a possible explanation for Maliki's urgency and his willingness to offend Sunnis by executing Saddam on a Sunni religious holiday. The "tell" may be whether or not the Sadr block ends their boycott of the Iraqi government.
Backgrounder: Who is this Moqtada guy, anyway?
The youngest son of Muhammad Sadiq Sadr - a senior Shia cleric assassinated in 1999, reportedly by agents of the Iraqi government - Moqtada Sadr was virtually unknown outside Iraq before the US-led invasion in March 2003.
The collapse of Baathist rule revealed his power base: a network of Shia charitable institutions founded by his father.
In the first weeks following the US-led invasion, Moqtada Sadr's followers patrolled the streets in the poor Shia suburbs of Baghdad, distributing food.
The Sadr name clearly has powerful resonances; the Shia district of Baghdad, Saddam City, was renamed Sadr City after the fall of the Iraqi leader...
In June 2003 he established a militia group, the Mehdi Army, in defiance of coalition arms controls, pledging to protect the Shia religious authorities in the holy city of Najaf.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
How Would Moqtada al-Sadr Gain Entrance to the Execution Chamber?
Moqtada's threat to end his participation in the Iraq government in protest of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's summit with G.W. Bush in Jordan was widely viewed as the cause of Maliki's dramatic last-minute snub of Bush at the November meeting. Two days of talks had been planned by the White House. Instead, Maliki and Bush had breakfast, a single meeting, and a news conference.
Iraq's precarious government was teetering yesterday as a powerful Shia militia leader threatened to withdraw support after sectarian killings reached a new peak and the country lurched closer to all-out civil war.
The prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, was forced to choose between his US protectors and an essential pillar of his coalition, when Moqtada al-Sadr declared his intention to walk out, potentially bringing down the government, if Mr Maliki went ahead with a meeting with President George Bush in Jordan next week.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
In the interests of being fair and balanced, here's what Bush's National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley had to say about Sadr's role in the Iraq government:
Q How can you say that we think the Maliki government is doing pretty well when, by all accounts, he would have no strength at all in parliament but for the bloc of votes that Sadr's party holds? It seems to be the majority view, in everything we read, that he has no power except the power which comes from his association with Sadr, who is inimical to U.S. interests.
MR. HADLEY: I don't think that's how it works. I think there are about 270 members, maybe 275 members in the legislature. Sadr has a block of 50. So this is a unity government, drawing from Kurds, Sunni and Shia. It has a broader base of support. Secondly, Sadr is in the government. Sadr has some ministers that are part of the government. And one of the things that Maliki has been very clear about is trying to keep Sadr in that government and get Sadr to recognize that he has a role as part of the government, he has a role as part of the government to ensure that the government is the exclusive source of authority and force within Iraq.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/...
Sadr's political block also controls four or five of Iraq's 37 ministries, most notably the Health Ministry, which is barely functioning and is considered to be thoroughly infiltrated by militants. Underscoring republican enmity toward the young cleric, two months ago, Senator McCain issued his own plausibly deniable fatwa, saying "I believe al-Sadr has to be taken out."
Ongoing negotiations for the return of Sadr to the Iraqi Government were complicated by the death of a senior figure in Sadr's organization, Saheb Al-Ameri, during a raid in Najaf on December 27th. While U.S. sources denied responsibility for Al-Ameri's death, claiming that the province was under Iraqi control, Arab sources quoted the head of Sayyed Moqtada al-Sadr's Parliamentary bloc Nassar Robaei, who said that Al-Ameri was executed by American troops in front of his wife and children.
The raid also complicates matters for Maliki, a Shiite who is politically beholden to Sadr and has been criticized by U.S. officials for not doing enough to rein in Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. Two Maliki advisers said that in recent weeks the prime minister had been trying to persuade Sadr to rejoin the political process and disarm his militia, which launched two major uprisings against U.S. forces in Najaf in 2004. The killing of Amiri, they worried, could hinder those efforts.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Nouri Maliki's actions demonstrate that he valued Sadr's cooperation more than he valued his relationship to the president of the United States. If Moqtada al-Sadr asked to attend the execution of Saddam Hussein as a condition of his return to the coalition government, it seems likely that Maliki would have agreed. Still unexplained is how Sadr could have passed by U.S. security to gain entrance to the execution chamber, particularly because the witnesses quoted by Arab papers claim Sadr put on his mask after he entered the chamber. It seems likely that if Moqtada al-Sadr attended the execution, American forces would have known about it.
Last but not least/Curiouser and Curiouser
How did Moqtada Sadr end up with the noose if he wasn't there?
KUWAIT CITY: A well-known Kuwaiti businessman is negotiating hard to own the noose which hung ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to death.
Reliable sources say the businessman's representatives have asked the Iraqi Ministry of Interior Affairs to sell the rope to them.
The businessman is apparently ready to pay any amount of money for the noose. According to sources, it is with Shiite leader Muqtada Al-Sadr and the businessman's representatives are negotiating with him.
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/...
Make up your own mind, with the aid of the following collages:
See also
Fact or rumour: references to stories in Arab dailies
Kagro X's story on the noose