Muqtada al-Sadr: Spoiler or Stabilizer?

[Culpeper]

Has he done this before? Also, I'm don't know what is going on with this guy lately. He must of lost some power. I don't know.

[Stan]

He's not getting much credit with Newsweek and the lastest I could find on the Middle East Forum was dated Fall, 2004.

By Jeffrey Bartholet
Newsweek

Dec. 4, 2006 issue - One way to understand Moqtada al-Sadr is to think of him as a young Mafia don. He aims for respectability, and is willing to kill for it. Yet the extent of his power isn't obvious to the untrained eye. He has no standing army or police force, and the Mahdi Army gunmen he employs have no tanks or aircraft. You could mistake him—at your peril—for a common thug or gang leader. And if he or his people were to kill you for your ignorance, he wouldn't claim credit. But the message would be clear to those who understand the brutal language of the Iraqi Street.

CNN covers the same story, but a different twist for this Monday, 09 APR 07.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is calling for an anti-American protest in the Iraqi city of Najaf on April 9, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

U.S. and Iraqi officials don't know al-Sadr's whereabouts. They have said he fled to Iran after recent military operations in Baghdad, but his supporters insist he remains in Iraq.

[SWJED]

1700 8 April Washington Post update - Sadr Accuses U.S. of Dividing Iraq Through Violence by Sudarsan Raghavan.

Calling America "the great evil," radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Sunday accused the United States of dividing Iraq through stoking violence, and he urged his Mahdi Army militiamen and Iraq's security forces to stop fighting each other in Diwaniyah, where clashes erupted over the weekend.

But the influential Shiite Muslim cleric stopped short of calling upon his fighters to rise up and battle U.S. troops, a move that would severely complicate an ongoing security offensive to pacify the capital and other parts of Iraq. Instead, Sadr ordered his followers to remain united and to go out and "demonstrate" in order to "end the occupation."

The call came on a bloody Easter Sunday for U.S. forces in Iraq, with the U.S. military announcing the deaths of 10 soldiers. Four soldiers were killed and one was wounded Saturday by an explosion near their vehicle in Diyala province north of Baghdad, and six died Sunday as a result of four separate attacks north and south of the capital, the military said...

Sadr's statement appeared to be aimed at stopping fighting in the southern city of Diwaniyah between his militia and Iraqi government security forces. In a three-day-old joint operation dubbed "Black Eagle," U.S. and Iraqi army forces have been battling the Mahdi Army for control of Diwaniyah. So far, nearly 40 militia members have been captured and several others killed in firefights, the U.S. military said in a statement Sunday...