It is a testimony to the longevity of the Iraq War that Muqtada al-Sadr has become a household name in America. Yet few are those who know much about him, beyond the modifiers -- "renegade cleric," "radical Shiite," "anti-American firebrand" -- that routinely precede his name in news reports.
Sifting through modifiers to get to heart of Al-Sadr
April 6, 2008 at 12:05AM
Patrick Cockburn, Iraq correspondent for the Independent newspaper in London, has remedied the problem with this deftly written, superbly researched portrait of the 39-year-old cleric (Muqtada. 226 pages. Scribner. $24).
Though he is the scion of a religious family with a long hierarchical pedigree, "cleric" in fact may be Al-Sadr's avocation. Politics, Cockburn advises us throughout the book, is what Al-Sadr is all about -- and he is very good at it.
The author assesses the widely held view of the cleric as a pawn of the Shiite ayatollahs in Tehran and thoroughly debunks it. Moreover, his analysis of Saddam Hussein's rule is succinct and trenchant. Cockburn's book is an important addition to the literature on Iraq.
MICHAEL J. BONAFIELD
Page 13 "The sudden emergence of Muqtada as a powerful figure at the time of the fall of Saddam is only surprising if one does not know the background and, above all, the bloody and dramatic story of resistance to Saddam Hussein by Iraqi Shia as a whole and the Al-Sadr family in particular."
Page 78 "Saddam Hussein reasserted his grip on power with surprising speed in the wake of his defeat in Kuwait and the uprisings of the Shia and Kurds. Few other rulers could have survived the self-inflicted catastrophes of 1991 ... 'We have got the worst of all possible worlds,' an Iraqi friend said to me in 1992. 'We have been completely defeated and we still have Saddam Hussein in power.'"
Page 199 "He was a highly experienced political operator ... He also had around him activist clerics, of his own age or younger, who had hands-on experience under Saddam of street politics within the Shia community."
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An Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed at least 14 people and wounded dozens more, Lebanese health officials said. It was the first such Israeli attack on Lebanon's capital in months and came shortly after Hezbollah pounded northern Israel with 140 rockets.
