IRAQ & IRAN - A Changing Sadrist Movement.

Having emerged after the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the Shi'ite movement of Muqtada al-Sadr is being transformed into a political force. Sadr is studying Ja'fari theology in Najaf, having just renewed a six-month ceasefire and suspended the operations of his JaM. The first ceasefire came after bloody clashes with the rival Badr Organisation in Karbala' in August 2007.

The Karbala' violence was a major embarrassment for Sadr, who had been seeking the support of Grand Ayatullah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shi'ite authority. The ceasefire was welcomed by Sistani, who had been encouraging Sadr to suspend JaM since January 2007. The two met in June to discuss the problem of JaM splinter groups. Najaf, the holy Shi'ite capital where Sistani and other grand ayatollahs are based, wants to see the Sadrists contained.

For Najaf, the best way to tame Sadr is to chip away at his popular base through the electoral process and inter-Shi'ite co-operation, such as his October 2007 pact with rival Shi'ite leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim. This would diminish his status as a challenge to the clerical institutions in Najaf. Sadr wants to become an ayatullah to gain religious legitimacy. He also wants to have access to a major source of funding which is primarily under the control of high-ranking Shi'ite clerics in Najaf. As his family's legacy alone would not entitle him to what his father - Ayatullah Muhammad-Sadeq al-Sadr, who was killed in 1999 by Saddam's regime - had acquired as a marja' taqlid (source of emulation).

Once becoming an ayatollah, a process which will take years as he is only in his early 30s, Sadr eventually would be able to issue fatwa (religious decrees) and control religious taxes - powers he now lacks as a junior cleric. If successful, he could extricate himself from the authority of the Iranian-born Sistani and Najaf's strict hierarchical system and close ties to the Shi'ite theocracy of Iran and beyond. Sadr is studying under the Afghan-born Grand Ayatullah Ishaq Fayadh.

Sadr wants to expand his areas of influence, mainly in the south. In Basra especially, he has to tackle his most powerful rival, Hakim's Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and its militia arm - the Badr Organisation - by propagating his new image in both the tribal and urban parts of Basra province. But this could cause conflict with SIIC and Badr.

As Sadr aims to bring together his followers and boost himself as their sole spiritual leader, this would ultimately undermine Sistani's influence. His younger followers may revere Sadr but obey Sistani on matters of religious and, potentially, political importance - hence another cause of conflict.

Sadr is also an Arab nationalist with links to some of the Sunni Arab groups in Iraq. By projecting his movement's Arab character, he will challenge Najaf's trans-nationalism by creating a new form of politics free from non-Iraqi influences.

Aside from their plans to centralise control over oil reserves, one of the reasons Sadr and his MPs have sided with the secular National List of former PM Iyad Allawi and Sunni leader Saleh al-Mutlaq's National Dialogue Front is to create a new parliamentary bloc to challenge Najaf and its influence over the ruling four-party coalition of PM Maliki.

Sadr is thus playing a delicate game of balancing his position between nationalism and sectarianism, though his appeal to Shi'ite factionalism is mainly aimed at bolstering his base where he is now seeking a new constituency and a more centralised political movement. The focus on a nationalist leadership strategy can also be attributed to the ongoing political transformation of Sunni politics in parliament.

The recent agreement signed between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) - which led to the formation of a new Kurdish-Sunni alliance - can further push Sadr to the nationalist camp. This will have implications for the rivalry between Sadr and Hakim. While Hakim favours federalism, as in the case of the PUK and KDP, Sadr is for centralization of Iraq.

The KDP and PUK are banking on the possibility of Ninewa province and its capital, Mosul, coming largely under the administrative control of Iraqi Kurdistan - which they perceive as one of the key points of agreement between them and IIP leader Tareq al-Hashemi. The Kurdish parties are thus seeing themselves in the ascendancy, with their own brand of nationalism marked by symbolic events like the display of a Kurdish flag by the regional parliament of Kurdistan. As a result, Sadr is bound to move to the nationalist and anti-federalist camp in parliament.

In this altered political setting, a new JaM could emerge as a powerful militia, a re-organised, disciplined para-military force vying not only for domination over other Shi'ite militias in the south, but possibly challenging the Kurdish militias in Baghdad and northern Iraq. Due to JaM's shadowy network, its potential military might should not be under-estimated.

When dozens of young Shi'ite volunteers responded in June 2003 to Sadr's fiery call to join JaM, the US administration in Baghdad dismissed this as a mere nuisance. The militia, the then Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) argued, would disappear - along with the insurgency - once the US-led troops completed the process of de-Ba'athification and the establishment of democracy in the country. But that was a major under-statement.

In reality, Sadr's forces were not just a "gang", but a newly formed unit of militants drawn largely from former Shi'ite infantry from Saddam's army and downtrodden, unemployed young people based in a Shi'ite slum of Baghdad called "Sadr City".

JaM grew into a force of more than 6,000 nearly a year after the US-led invasion. Its expanding network of operatives grew in parts of the country where US and Iraqi forces failed to protect civilians against insurgent attacks and criminal activities. To many military analysts, JaM represented a complex set of social and religious currents in the Shi'ite society which had been forced underground during the Ba'athist regime.

From late 2003 to the spring of 2004, JaM quickly grew in size and strength. From 2005 to 2006, JaM's rapid expansion in size and influence astonished even those who had predicted the rise of the Sadrists as a major force in the post-Ba'thist era. By end-2006, JaM had about 60,000 armed men, constituting a major force competing for power.

After the Feb. 22, 2006, bombing of the revered Shi'ite shrine in Samarra' by Neo-Salafis, JaM developed death squads which killed many Sunnis. That, however, gave JaM a bad image as a sectarian force and, eventually, led to its split into many different JaM factions. At times, mainly in 2007, Sadr seemed unable to tame those factions. The August 2007 violence with Badr forces in Karbala' forced Sadr to freeze the operations of JaM and declare the six-month ceasefire. But Iran's Quds Force, the external arm of the IRGC, managed to control dissident militia groups and to direct them into attacking US forces (as explained above).

The Sadrists now are projecting themselves as avid advocates of social justice and try to represent the more economically disenfranchised Shi'ite Iraqis, who make up a considerable portion of the southern regions and parts of Baghdad. The movement's social service system resembles that of Hizbullah, the Iranian theocracy's offshoot in Lebanon.

The Sadrist militants are inspired by the apocalyptic teachings of Muqtada's uncle and father-in-law, Grand Ayatullah Muhammad-Baqer al-Sadr, whose execution by Saddam in 1980 elevated his prestige further. The core of his teachings is a belief in the millenarian notion of the return of the 12th Imam and Mahdi, Muhammad ibn Hassan (born in 868 AD), whose re-appearance - as he is already on Earth but concealed from view - will establish justice in a world infected by sin and oppression.

JaM's spiritual mission is to hasten al-Mahdi's re-appearance through various enactments of self-sacrifice, though at times these acts may merely mean offering selfless service to the Shi'ite public. In this ideological spirit, JaM is known to operate both as a military unit and a charity group.

Whether JaM will re-emerge as a more disciplined militia under Sadr's full control remains to be seen. Early March will most likely witness the rise of a new JaM, with centralised command and tightly watched areas of operation. Also remains to be seen is whether or not Iran's IRGC or Lebanon's Hizbullah would have a role in JaM. Some say much of this may depend on the future of US-Iranian relations.

A changed JaM may give way to an upsurge of a new Sadrist movement claiming to represent the ideals of Sadr's father-in-law. But Sadr's choice of a new strategy for his movement signals an era of Shi'ite politics in Iraq which will revolve around control over the country's petroleum resources and militia power.