Hundreds Call on Sadr Militia to Quit Iraq's Najaf

[maddezmom]

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Hundreds of people marched in Najaf on Tuesday calling on rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to pull his militia out of the Iraqi holy city.

Witnesses said they marched to the central shrine area of the city before dispersing peacefully. Some Sadr gunmen fired in the air toward the end of the march, but most marchers had dispersed by then.

The demonstration, organized by Sadr's political foes, followed a smaller one on Monday and reflected increasing pressure from Shi'ite elders on Sadr to move his men out of the city as U.S.-led forces tighten their noose around it.

U.S. forces have surrounded the city as part of a campaign to crush Sadr's fighters and end a month-long uprising that erupted in Baghdad and cities across the Shi'ite south.

~snip~
more:http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5101628

[gottaB]

1. I saw that headline and thought of what Juan Cole said yesterday

on the 10th

Many conservative commentators are crowing that the other Shiite groups are helping the US deal with the Sadrists. What is really happening is that the other major Shiite leaders all along have cut the Sadrists out of the process, and the US has consistently been manipulated by them in this regard. Now they are trying to use US troops to finish off Muqtada's militia while they try to find a way to convince Muqtada to surrender himself. The danger here is in alienating and excluding a very large number of Shiites, while including and favoring Shiite political leaders who have much smaller followings than Muqtada does. Down the road, this policy could backfire badly on the US and on the caretaker government.

And then I checked what he was saying today

The US military is fighting the Sadrists as though they were a rival army. They are not. The fighters may be relatively small in number, but the cadres (who are all potential fighters) run to the tens of thousands, and followers to the hundreds of thousands. This is a movement, and it is not possible to make it disappear by mere military operations. The latter can curb the paramilitary aspect of the movement, but that is a relatively small part of it, and can easily be reconstituted. (Residents of East Baghdad were already busy repairing the Sadrist HQ that was destroyed on Monday).

Both currently on the front page at Juan Cole, Informed Comment.

I started wondering about this (How Strong is the Army of the Hidden Imam?) back in April because the facts being reported were outright false and the authorized description of Sadr's movement didn't fit the phenomenon at all. I still have grave concerns about the US course of action here, because it has ramification far beyond Iraq, and I'm not sure that any of the clever people working this scenario are on our side.

[Kagemusha]

2. I'm reading Cole, too. Here's the thing...

Shouldn't this protest have attracted THOUSANDS of marchers?

Doesn't the fact it did not speak volumes?

[David__77]

3. Thousands of south Vietnamese marched against the NLF.

But that didn't mean that most weren't sympathetic to them. THe one thing that has been striking about Iraq is the almost total lack of public support for occupation. In Vietnam, you had true social stratification on this issue, but not really in Iraq. You have some foreign returnees supporting the occupation and then a bit of factional strife to benefit from. But it won't win the war for the US, not by a long shot.