The Wild Card

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For U.S. officials, that remains a tough line to swallow. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, al-Sadr's behavior has ranged from irritating to intolerable. Details of al-Sadr's personal life are a closely guarded secret: he is thought to be in his mid-30s. He is married and has children, although his aides won't disclose how many. He bears a name revered by Shi'ites all over the world: al-Sadr's father and uncle were influential and popular ayatullahs murdered by Saddam's regime. Muqtada was a virtual unknown in Iraq until the U.S. invasion, after which he began building his power base through often ruthless means: his supporters were blamed for the April 2003 assassination in Najaf of an influential pro-Western ayatullah. (The U.S. initially fingered al-Sadr for the murder, then quietly let the matter drop. Al-Sadr has denied any involvement in the murder.)

In the first half of 2004, he became a nationalist hero to many Iraqis after leading two armed uprisings against U.S. forces. His Mahdi Army is made up of thousands of poor Shi'ites, the majority of whom live in a densely populated Baghdad suburb that bears al-Sadr's family name. Little more than rabble, the Mahdi Army was no match for U.S. troops, but at least 29 American service members were killed in battles with al-Sadr's forces.

Al-Sadr has moderated his image by embracing elections and joining the political process. But in the two months since Iraq's general election, he has shown he will be a disruptive figure in the heart of any new government. He scuttled a plan that would have replaced Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari--who is widely distrusted by Sunnis--with the more acceptable Adil Abdul Mahdi, and his refusal to deal with secular politicians like former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has confounded U.S. attempts to nudge the Shi'ites to form a national unity government. "We did our best to bring [al-Sadr] into the political process," says Redha Jawad Taqi, a senior leader of SCIRI, the largest Shi'ite party. "But [the Sadrists] believe wrong things about democracy."

The biggest concern for many Iraqis is al-Sadr's unwillingness to disarm the Mahdi Army militia, which has a long record of inflammatory and often criminal behavior. In areas where al-Sadr's fighters hold sway, they use brute force to impose a strict Islamic code. They are frequently accused of kidnapping and assassinating those who resist them. Many Mahdi Army fighters have been absorbed into the Iraqi security forces and police, and in the aftermath of the Samarra bombing, many police vehicles in Baghdad were openly flying Mahdi Army colors--black and green. Sunni groups say policemen did nothing to stop the violence last week. In some places, they claim, policemen joined the mobs to kill Sunnis and defile their mosques.