>Thrilled? By the Sadrists? Really? Do you have any political
>philosophy these days, or is it just that Cockburnesque love of
>fucking things up?
>Doug
Baby Sadr would by no means be the worst thing that could happen. He is a genuinely popular figure in Iraq, and not just with hardcore Shia nutters; the recent polls in Iraq gave the twin results that the populace was tired and disgusted with sectarian politics, but that Sadr was far and away the single most popular political figure.
He's got that characteristic of Islamist politicians which also accounted for the popularity of the Taliban in the early days and of the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia (and the JEM in Sudan) - he's honest. Personal integrity is a big thing with all the Islamist types. He has also been moving since day one from a purely Shia Islamist position to a more nationalist form of Islam; this is basically because he is not and never has been taken particularly seriously as a religious figure. He isn't an imam and was initially regarded as a hooligan trading off his father's reputation. The only reason he was popular in the first place was that he scored a couple of victories over the Americans.
There are still a lot of nasty questions to ask Sadr about exactly what happened during his period in charge of Najaf; I have not seen the reports of ad-hoc sharia courts and severed limbs substantiated (which makes me sceptical about them) but nor have they been falsified and I personally suspect that serious violations took place. I also think that his disavowal of any involvement with Abu Diri's death squad is not completely credible; although one would have to note in a political context that he at least denies being associated with death squads which is more than SCIRI do with the Badr Brigades.
Recall that the whole initial kick-off for Sadr was that the Americans censored his newspaper for making a wholly sensible call for immediate democratic elections, not a sharia state. Sadr has also been scrupulous in following Sistani's lead in not taking Shia sectarian politics as a reason for becoming a catspaw for Iran.
He is, at the end of the day, an Islamist and a fundamentalist and I personally would certainly not vote for him if he stood for Holborn & St Pancras. He's not very fond of gays and he advocates an entirely illiberal penal code and few civil liberties. But both those things are also true of Fidel Castro and being a Fidelista isn't taboo on this list is it? I think that qualified support for al-Sadr as a genuinely popular figure and perhaps among the least worst feasible options in Iraq is a much more reasonable position than being enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad (who I confess I see as a George Galloway figure; a basically appalling character who possesses the single redeeming feature that he winds up all the right people).
best dd
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