Saturday, April 05, 2008

The Sadrist "Trend"

An excellent piece that says many things I want to say about the Sadrists, here are some portions I translated:

BY ALI BDAYWI.

The Sadrist Trend. A phrase often spoken by Sadrist current MPs, for the life of me I don't know why does Mr. Bahaa al-Aaraji and his fellow Sadrists love to say "Sadrist Trend" instead of "Sadrist Current." Actually, following the practices of the current, one finds out that it espouses a physically liquid form, Sadrists phrase their sentences in a way the matches the shape of the container, the phrase "Sadrist Trend" invokes oppression and a political victimization, this is especially apparent if it follows "targeting", as in "targeting the Sadrist Trend", a phrase seemingly glued to Mr. Bahaa's tongue. The olive branch distributed by Sayyid Muqtada's followers in sync with the battles of Basra fought by his army's members represents a symbol of the Sadrist double-standard modus operandi which favor maneuver and trickery.
The Sadrist Line, the term Mr. Bahaa prefers over the official title of the Sadrist Current, is an oratory maneuver as well, designed to say that the "Sadrist Trend" is a juridical and/or ideological line. It implies a peaceful point of view that seeks to establish a idea that in its core is quite concept-bankrupt, an ardent observer of "Sadrist Trend" publications can only find two or three words that fit the size of a 3.5 floppy disk: "Kicking The Occupation Out."

Logically we ask ourselves, is there any divine method by which we can topple Saddam's regime other than occupation? Theoretically and realistically, there was never an armed coup, or a popular uprising that managed to do that, thus the scenario we are forced to embrace would be the toppling of the regime by a US invasion that hands the government to the opposition, to create a pro-US democratic regime. Regardless of US intentions, or the political eligibility of those parties, what matters to Iraqi people are the circumstantial results of eliminating a tyrannical military rural rule that outlasted 30 years. In fact, the followers of the "Sadrist Trend" have no tangible idea of what occupation is, sure, they know how to handle an AK-47, but they understand murder more than they understand occupation, the theoretical backbone behind the Sadrist Line ideology. This is demonstrated by the first political sign of the rejection of occupation, the murder of Sayyid Abdulmajid al-Khoei as commanded by Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr, based on legal documents and witnesses, this is a murder that is punishable by law, even if the family of the murdered dropped the case.

If the Sadrists had rejected the occupation since its early days, then this means one of two things: they either reject the toppling of Saddam's regime, or they reject the way the regime was toppled. What we saw was that the early Sadrist anti-occupation stance only served the remnants of the Saddamist resistance to America since the two coincided temporally. the early Sadrist resistance confused even populist Iraqi society and state institutions which collapsed due to major mistakes the Americans are to be blamed for. As soon as the ex-regime government Fedayeen and Foreign Fighters were quelled, the Sadrists broke out as if fighting for Hala and Raghad Hussein, what is that about? the direct enemy of Sadr II was Saddam Hussein. Saddam killed Sadr II, executed Sadr I and his sister Bint-al-Huda after she was raped. So why were the Sadrists so keen on fighting the Americans? More importantly, the Sadrists borrowed from the ex-regime the same mentality we need to put out of existence: belief in revolution, rifles and adoption of an ignorant community as a massive popular base, which runs contrary to the traditional Dawa party that favored more intellectual colorings.

the Iraqi people wanted to live in civillian clothes after Saddam, they wanted to bury the AK-47 they lived with for dozens fo years, the Iraqis wanted to be overjoyed, to end the legend of the Eternal Leader, however the Sadrists severely protected those leftovers of the past: ignorant men with no education, herd mentality, deliberate ignorance, Eternal Leaders, and Sadr Offices that issues dispatches for civilians.

Link: Arabic

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

abbas, was the last paragraph your comment or part of the piece?

i am gaining a lot of respect for arabic commentary/community as a result of these translations btw.

annie

Anonymous said...

abbas,u only manage to translate shitty articles like ur shitty brains. and now u want to believe that the sadrists are nothing but exbaathists mentality ?
u, the sadrists nd the rest of the iraqis r nothing but a bunch of political whores.
c'mon let's start the bidding for who pays more.

CMAR II said...

Abbas,

I'm not sure I get the meaning of "line" and "current" in this article, nor of the meaning in their opposition to one another. Is it more obvious in Arabic?

Does he answer his question "So why were the Sadrists so keen on fighting the Americans?"?

Not much to disagree with here. I'm curious about what state institutions he considers to have "collapsed" due to American mistakes and how.

I have gathered that all Iraqi state institutions were deliberately centered wholly around Saddam. Bdaywi doesn't seem to think so. Wasn't that what made Saddam's government so completely mad? After 30 years of Saddam, weren't they and Saddam like Sauron and his ring? Destroy the ring and Sauron self-destroys. Destroy Sauron and the ring becomes impotent.

CMAR II said...

u, the sadrists nd the rest of the iraqis r nothing but a bunch of political whores.
c'mon let's start the bidding for who pays more.


Layla? Layla Anwar? Is that you?
;-)

RhusLancia said...

Thanks for translating that, Abbas.

Is Dbaywi Dawa?

Anonymous said...

They call Muqtada for " THE LEADER" and the last person was called so was Saddam himself. Falluja are being rebuilt right now and it's very quiet there while the Sadr City is besieged by the goverment. It's exactly like Saddam's days. But it's not Saddam's fault this time but It's Muqtada's fault and his evil Mahdi Army. We wanted to build an new Iraq but the Saddamists, Sadrists and Badrists ruined everything.

onix said...

sadrist were not unique in not having a practical modus operandi of the first moment. After the line to get usians out of the country had become doctrine. I think only weeks after the invasion, sadr made the point the mahdi movement would resist occupation forcefully, and so they have done.
One might as well blame badr of the exact same vaguety, with this difference to be sure badr supported or even instigated the the genocidal nature of the occupying operation. Anyway seems to me that all solutions or aproaches should include these 30% of irakis that perhaps directly support sadr. Trying to do away with the whole group makes a repressive and bad impression.

Abbas u are a refugee so you wont think like this article i think. Someone that would want to go back to a beautifull (preferably so) nation, has no choice but to deal positively with the parts of the resistance that managed to stay.

Otherways there will just be no place to go back to even in 10 years or more. Not becus the madhi don't let you, but irak will be a place noone wants to go. well make that, no sunni or shia.

About the great iranian fears i would say don't exagerate! Naturally a people forced into armed resistance looks for sympathy, support or allies, that doesn't mean they want to surrender your nation to them, unless ofcourse you resist cooperation for so long , bitterness leaves no other options.
I hope that is not the plan.

Both by being so negative about the madhi movement and by alienating them through the use of (btw. the occupiers) double moral and arguments, u'd miss an important option for reconciliation.
Madhi army, sunni's or even badr. it's all the same. Having a task in a situation no human qualifies for, means they all 3 make horrible mistakes. And either of them will argue the defensive nature. I suppose even the kurds can think of a way how resistance in their area would be supposed to make the nation more secure.

Somehow its the militia effect, build some militias and they will fight. So for the peace process it is essential to get to understand and respect another. That or an afghan situation, where karzai wants an army consisting of most of the able bodied males just to keep the alredi mutilated from exploding on.

onix said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lynnette In Minnesota said...

What we saw was that the early Sadrist anti-occupation stance only served the remnants of the Saddamist resistance to America since the two coincided temporally.

Exactly. What has always struck me about Al-Sadr, was how much of a politician he appears to be. With his anti-occupation platform he is trying to appeal to those who were against the invasion or who have been hurt by it, at the same time drawing people's attention away from his own faults. His slogan reminds me of the first President Bush's "Read my lips, no new taxes" remark.

...state institutions which collapsed due to major mistakes the Americans are to be blamed for.

This is interesting, because I just posted an excerpt from Yahia Khairi Said's testimony before the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee over at Zeyad's regarding somthing similar. I think the roots of the collapse were founded in the system set up by Saddam. Basically people did what they were told to do. They were not required to make individual decisions. When that kind of control was removed after the invasion (yes, yes, I know, that was us) the system collapsed. As the excerpt mentioned, each Ministry turned into its own fiefdom. Nobody worked with each other. And, yet, they did not have the experience to make the major decisions. They seem to be trying to work out a solution now. But like anything in Iraq, it is not a sure thing.

RhusLancia said...

Hey Abbas, this article from Washington Times refers to Muqtada as "Sheik al-Sadr" several times. Is he a Sheik(h) now?

Anonymous said...

I think the roots of the collapse were founded in the system set up by Saddam.

gee, ya think. sorta like had we liked saddams system we wouldn't have invaded and therfore it wouldn't have collapsed?

They were not required to make individual decisions.


yawn. ms psychobabble . as opposed to them being required to make the individual decision to support puppet government 'democracy' w/a little genocide thrown into the mix?

annie

Anonymous said...

lyn, why don't you enlighten us w/an example of how a federal employee of the US government might be required to make individual decisions.

annie

Anonymous said...

what kind of individual decisions do you think iraqi gov employees have been having a hard time with. like ...gee my families life is at risk , which militia shall i choose to believe will most likely keep me alive?

what is so different between the individual iraqi and any person living in a society under a brutal occupation and a brutal puppet government at a time of war?

Lynnette In Minnesota said...

Annie,

lyn, why don't you enlighten us w/an example of how a federal employee of the US government might be required to make individual decisions.

Iraq:

Excerpt from testimony by Yahia Khairi Said before the United States Senate's Foreign Relations committee

Neither the line Ministries nor the Ministry of Finance(MoF) inherited policy planning and coordination capabilities from the previous regime. Economic and planning functions at the line Ministries were, in reality, accounting and engineering functions. Ministries received detailed instruction from MoPDC which they duly carried out. The MoF was the Government's cashier, releasing funds and ensuring proper accounting but had no analytical or policy planning capabilities.

Ministries used only to carrying out clearly detailed instructions are simply not equipped to budget and spend multi-billion investment allocations.


United States:

Pentagon

Note the planning panel that is set up to make this decision within the Pentagon. I would say they are an example of individuals making major decisions within a branch of the United States government.

annie said...

Note the planning panel that is set up to make this decision within the Pentagon.

lyn, you really should read the stovepipe by seymore hersh or the accounts by karen Kwiatkowski or anything about the office of special plans. everything was run out of the VP office.

choose another example, the pentagon is hardly appropriate. the latest john yoo memo was just released as was the vanity fair article green light telling of the gitmo and how they were most definitely not task w.making their own decision wrt torture.

also, wrt your assertions regarding the ministries, it certainly sounds like dismantling them and changing the guards w/out specific understanding of how to run the government (which is after all the responsibility of the invader) is a perfect recipe for exactly what is going on now. a recipe for dismantling raq.

you can choose to think it was all a drastic mistake, me. i don't think we are that incompetent, i think we arrived to dismantle iraq, and we did.

take a bow.

annie said...

has anyone heard from anyone in baghdad? i am very worried about sadr city. there is a big fire there. i wonder if anyone is allowing water in to put it out. will all the civilians who die be collateral damage?

annie said...

Iraq's Maliki threatens to bar Sadr from vote

BAGHDAD, April 7 (Reuters) - Iraq's prime minister raised the stakes in his showdown with followers of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, saying in an interview broadcast on Monday they would be barred from elections unless their militia disbands.

The comments followed an offensive by government forces into the cleric's Baghdad stronghold, the Shi'ite slum of Sadr City, in which heavy fighting returned to the capital after a week of relative calm when Sadr called his militiamen off the streets.

"A decision was taken ... that they no longer have a right to participate in the political process or take part in the upcoming elections unless they end the Mehdi Army," Maliki said in an interview with CNN, according to a report posted on the U.S. television network's Web site.

Bruno said...

Annie, that's the most important news I've read all day. Thank you so much for posting it.

The Sadr movement suspected all along that the Basra operation was designed to crush the movement and make it irrelevant before the upcoming provincial elections; now we have confirmation.

Thanks again.

annie said...

bruno, badger has an interesting take on it. as does pat lang

Sadr's response has been to ask for the guidance of the senior ayatollahs in Najaf and Qom as to whether or not he should disarm. (Irony Alert - one would hope that he will also seek the guidance of the Mahdi in this matter) This appeal to Najaf and Qom is a strong move. He can hardly lose in this. If he is advised by the ijma' (consensus) of the hawza to retain his forces, then he will do so with religious sanction. If advised to disarm, then Maliki will be in the position of either allowing Sadr to run his candidates relatively unmolested or of being seen to have "rigged" the election against the consensus of the hawza.

Sadr is now in Qom seeking to sharpen his religious and political credentials. The Iranians' fine, complex, Florentine hand is in this somewhere. pl

onix said...

Annie i guess ur usian? annie 'blogger since january 2007' gender female. 't would be like if the united states ahd attacked mexico and u'd live just over the mexico - border.
U'd see mexico devastated starved and bombed year out. Could send a post to hear them crying so to say,
perhaps the major iran thrive is sincere human interest to help.

as a sideways proof of this you can find how little credibility can be found in the plentifull accusations of iranian support.

You can also think the other way around. like the recentest us reports. They didn't but when they want they will.

Well maybe, i guess there is a point iran would feel strongly obliged to help iraki shias.

However i think the point is not reached and even when iran would start to consider the south iraki a genocidal situation they would hold back unless the humanitarian situation collapsed completely.

Probably they decided that a freeer contribution to arms in irak
wouldn't check the situation wich is logical as there is no iraki majority for seperations and no iraki majority for iran.

That besides their was a ceasefire in place long before the accusations and resulting pleas from iraki really started to work on their nervs if i may believe the more recent news: "that some or a few of the more roque madhi army elements" (heh the ones who did the dirty job of reacting on scaring confrontations i suppose, wich was as a result of the forced desorganisation perhaps partly , it was a big strike for Mook i get it when something of the like happened in karbala, somewhat amateurish.

Well then again it somehow shows religious dogma isn't the only thrive of a 21st century madhi youngster. Guess that was what scared him..

oh god i get the humor kick again.
sorry to bother you folks.
gl take it easy, we will only really all have won, when we win all.






Only, the united states wasn't you but someone exactly like the united states.

onix said...

It was a bit strange indeed.
I remember at that point in time it wasn't very undiplomatic to support raghdad hussein, she was a symbol of ppl had served saddam well of who there were plenty, who were among the first ofcourse to become targetted. A symbolic suni
(think bhuto perhaps but still). It was diplomatical at that stage and a still somewhat more open option then now to remain some trust in baath loyalties.

k can be for sadr she represents some sort of statement towards the proceedings around saddam as well, or that it was an attempt at a popular uprise,(didnt have the looks of a very serious attempt i remember, but i dont remember much of the affair) but it involved (again) clever diplomatical and tactical political movement without loosing much face, when we now make the balance.


Must say i hate he pronounces so much of a disgust over their illiterate herd mentality etc.

the good news is a thing so brought is never true. We r dealing with a 21st century madhist movement, that has no ambition to live in a worse mess then iran did 2 years back before the boykots.

well i guess its all lost. to much of a bloodbath, no sunnis will trust the shia, they will shout terrorist if an usian kills a sadrist and mean the sadrist.

Seems this guy has forgotten it was an effort to get badr on the table as a perpetrator.

concerning maleducation, if the literacy situation of one group of populace is bad, how do you think is that of the other?
(priviliged?)

annie said...

onix, keep posting, your thoughtas are very interesting to me. i don't understand some of it, but i am trying.

perhaps the major iran thrive is sincere human interest to help.

i am sure there are as many diverse people in iran as anywhere. it is completely normal for most humans to feel sympathy for those suffering and in pain. i always try to remeber the regolar people and to remember we are always fed lots of propaganda. as for their leaders i really don't know. they all plot things, that is what people in power do.

my opinion behind all the madness is that the US and iran both have the same immediate goals, to break off southern iraq from the body, for eventual control or influence. once that haooens then you will see the real competition for iraq's black gold between the US, and iran. unfortunately those in power usually consider the populace less then they consider maintaining control.

thnx for your response.

yes, i am american. actually i am proud to be an american. not proud of what my country is doing now in iraq, not at all. but we are more than that, my american tribe. you just don't hear about us, the media drives the message. we are jear listening, and yes, if mexico was suffering, we would be suffering too. thay are our brothers. it is this understanding that allows me to know most iranians are probably good loving people, like people everywhere.

annie said...

sorry for all my typos, it is late and i have misplaced my glasses.

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