Iraq: Islamic Power: New Thugs On The Block

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It had become a ritual. Each Friday hundreds of young, impoverished Shi'ite men would pile into beat-up Kia minibuses in a Baghdad slum known as Sadr City. They would travel the 90-mile highway to the holy city of Kufa to lay their prayer mats inside the mosque, jockeying for a spot as close to the podium as possible. Whenever the white car carrying their leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, came into view, the scene would turn into pandemonium. Bodyguards with Kalashnikov ma-chine guns would struggle to carve out a path so al-Sadr could reach a platform beneath the arches. Once there, his speech was usually brief, but the point of his appearance was clear: to show his movement's strength and plant the seeds for Islamic revolution. "Muqtada!" the crowd would roar. "We will sacrifice our blood!"

When political ambition coincides with popular disillusion, the mix can be combustible. And so it proved last week in the mean streets of Sadr City, a neighborhood filled with poor, disgruntled Shi'ites, when the young rabble-rousing cleric decided to roll the dice. Since the day a year ago when U.S. soldiers pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein, symbolizing the regime's fall, al-Sadr has railed against the American occupation. He built up a network of civilian supporters and recruited fighters for his Mahdi Army, named for the 12th, or Hidden, Imam, whom Shi'ites believe will return as their Messiah. Al-Sadr delivered fiery anti-American sermons but always stopped short of calling for armed confrontation. Until April 4, that is, when he issued a call from his Najaf office for his black-clad militiamen to "terrorize your enemy." Thousands took to the streets of the capital to attack American forces, and soon a string of cities across the formerly pacific Shi'ite heartland were aflame with running gun battles aimed at ending the U.S.-led occupation.

The U.S. was of two minds about the man. Occupation officials knew that al-Sadr was trouble. He had stirred up threatening protests numerous times, his rhetoric spread a dangerous message, and his militia was steadily growing. An Iraqi court charged him with allowing the murder of Abdul-Majid al-Khoei, a U.S.-favored moderate cleric who was hacked to death in April 2003, and by September, the Pentagon had cooked up a plan to seize al-Sadr. But military officials in Baghdad eventually concluded he was a minor player who was gradually being marginalized, his army more phantom than real, his support flagging as the size of his Friday crowds shrank. U.S. officials put the arrest plan on hold and even signaled that al-Sadr might escape punishment if his behavior improved. The question the Americans asked, says Brigadier General Mark Hertling, deputy commander of the Army's 1st Armored Division, which controls Baghdad, was, Do you stir up a hornet's nest, or do you let it die out--especially when you're trying to win the people's trust?