Muqtada.
Nir Rosen has a very long and gloomy article in Boston Review about the devolution of Iraq into sectarianism over the course of the past three years -- highlighted most recently by the killing of Saddam on a Sunni religious holiday and by the exchange between Saddam and his Shia executioners about Muqtada al-Sadr (Rosen's spelling).
In his piece, Rosen argues that the gradual shift of Muqtada and his militia from implicit to explicit sectarianism in the vein of Zarqawi mirrors the falling apart of the idea of an Iraqi state and the progress toward Shia-Sunni (and interdenominational) civil war in the region. At the end, he suggests that even Muqtada is going to be eclipsed as the symbol of Shiite dominance:
In the summer of 2006 rumors began spreading through Baghdad of a shadowy killer known as Abu Dira, a nickname meaning “the armor bearer.”...All information about this man is based on rumor, but he is said to be in his 30s and called either Salim or Ismail. It is said that he lives in Sadr City but was born in the southern Shia town of Amara. Some say that he is a member of the Mahdi Army and commands hundreds of fighters, but others say that he is a renegade militiaman, out of Muqtada’s control. Some say he was a bodyguard in the former regime but later fled to Iran. Or that he was a guard and torturer in one of Saddam’s prisons. One Web site claims that he controlled the ministry of the interior’s Falcon Brigade, which kidnapped Sunnis from Baghdad’s Zafraniya district. Some say that every time there is an attack on Shias he counts the dead and kills an equal number of Sunnis. Others say he kills a greater number of Sunnis. He is said to kill dozens of Sunnis every day in a remote part of Sadr City by a dam, and he is said to have threatened to fill the craters left from car bombs in Sadr City with the bodies of Sunnis.
...Whether Abu Dira exists or not, the image of a raging, lone killer is prophetic at a time when Muqtada’s control over his militia is uncertain. But this much is clear: the Mahdi Army is the police. It holds all the force of state power.
In his piece, Rosen argues that the gradual shift of Muqtada and his militia from implicit to explicit sectarianism in the vein of Zarqawi mirrors the falling apart of the idea of an Iraqi state and the progress toward Shia-Sunni (and interdenominational) civil war in the region. At the end, he suggests that even Muqtada is going to be eclipsed as the symbol of Shiite dominance:
In the summer of 2006 rumors began spreading through Baghdad of a shadowy killer known as Abu Dira, a nickname meaning “the armor bearer.”...All information about this man is based on rumor, but he is said to be in his 30s and called either Salim or Ismail. It is said that he lives in Sadr City but was born in the southern Shia town of Amara. Some say that he is a member of the Mahdi Army and commands hundreds of fighters, but others say that he is a renegade militiaman, out of Muqtada’s control. Some say he was a bodyguard in the former regime but later fled to Iran. Or that he was a guard and torturer in one of Saddam’s prisons. One Web site claims that he controlled the ministry of the interior’s Falcon Brigade, which kidnapped Sunnis from Baghdad’s Zafraniya district. Some say that every time there is an attack on Shias he counts the dead and kills an equal number of Sunnis. Others say he kills a greater number of Sunnis. He is said to kill dozens of Sunnis every day in a remote part of Sadr City by a dam, and he is said to have threatened to fill the craters left from car bombs in Sadr City with the bodies of Sunnis.
...Whether Abu Dira exists or not, the image of a raging, lone killer is prophetic at a time when Muqtada’s control over his militia is uncertain. But this much is clear: the Mahdi Army is the police. It holds all the force of state power.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home