ISN Security Watch, 9 Apr 08: The Tangled Web of Shia Politics
....Aside from the government-JAM conflict, there is another equally important dynamic at work here. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and its armed wing, the Badr Corps, are bent on destroying the power of the al-Sadr movement. What has added urgency to this strategy is the crucial provincial elections of October 2008.

In 2005, the Sadrists boycotted the local elections. Consequently, the ISCI won seven out of nine southern Shia governorates (that is, all but Maysan and Basra). Three years of economic mismanagement and graft by ISCI functionaries and their cronies, plus the Sadrists' continuing appeal to the mostly impoverished Shias of the south can easily translate into a huge electoral victory for the al-Sadr movement come this October - a prospect clearly dreaded by both the ISCI and al-Maliki. (Al-Maliki's own Dawa Party has no mass base to speak of.)

From the beginning, in 2003, the two main rival Shia groups - the ISCI and the al-Sadr movement - followed completely different political tracks.....