Firas Al-Atraqchi charts how two Iraqi Shia militias came to dominate Iraqi politics In recent days, and particularly in the aftermath of the Askariya Mosque bombing in Samaraa, Iraq's Shia militias -- the Badr Brigade and the Mahdi Army -- and their variegated roles have come under the spotlight. From where did they arise, and what is their influence? During the Iraq-Iran war, a purge of high-ranking Shia clerics sympathetic to Iran, forced Mohamed Baqir Al-Hakim to defect to the Persian neighbour where he established the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Inspired by Iranian spiritual leaders and having received much support from the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, SCIRI made use of Iranian funds to mobilise an armed force. By 1982, Al-Hakim was provided thorough logistical and financial support to build an army, what came to be called the Badr Brigade -- a 10,000-strong corps consisting of infantry, armoured, artillery, anti-aircraft and commando units. The Badr Brigade is committed to the establishment of an Islamic Iraq. The force was originally comprised of Iraqis who had defected with Al-Hakim to Iran and exiles who opposed the Baathist government. As the war raged and thousands of Iraqi POWs were interned in Iran, the newly formed Badr Brigade sought to swell its ranks with Iraqi Shia soldiers. Those who refused to join Badr were beaten, according to Iraqi POWs repatriated following the end of the war in 1988. The main objectives of SCIRI were to sow dissent among the Iraqi military and populace during the war with Iran, rally for a revolution in Iraq to overthrow the Baathists, and also carry out assassinations and subterfuge against the Iranian military opposition based in Iraq -- the Mujahidi Khalq. The Badr Brigades were themselves trained and outfitted by the Khomeini militia, known as the Revolutionary Guard -- or Sepah e Pasdaran -- who functioned as the executors of the spiritual leadership in Iran, the mullahs. After the defeat of the Iraqi army in Kuwait in March 1991, the Badr Brigade, now numbering at least 15,000 infiltrated the south assisted by the Pasdaran and helped fuel what later came to be called an "uprising" against the central Baghdad government. That term is a misnomer, however, as the "uprising" had been planned and executed from and by Iran. The Pasdaran had a long list of targets, from low-ranking Baathists to high-level military officers. Because the terms of the 1991 ceasefire between the US and Iraqi forces did not prohibit the use of military helicopters, the Iraqi Republican Guard's reprisal was as swift as it was brutal. Civilians were killed by both sides. The Badr Brigades would not resurface on a significant scale until February 2003, when a heavy mechanised division crossed into northern Iraq, near the village of Darbandikhan. The reappearance of the Badr Brigades put the US administration in a bind. SCIRI had proved reluctant to support any anti-Baathist conferences grouping various Iraqi exile opposition figures together. Bush administration officials mulled how to convince a heavily armed and fanatical Shia-led group to fill the gap in a post-Saddam political vacuum and maintain an alliance with the US military. Concessions were made, primarily that the Mujahidi Khalq would be ostracised and blacklisted as a terrorist group (a major concession to SCIRI backer Iran) and that the Badr Brigades would be allowed to keep their weapons without US harassment. Baqir Al-Hakim, leader of SCIRI returned to Iraq in early May 2003 in what many analysts saw as reminiscent of Khomeini's return to Iran in 1979. In southern Iraq, the SCIRI leader said: "Iraq must base its laws on Islamic strictures." But Al-Hakim began to tone down his rhetoric after it was confirmed that his brother, Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim, would play a prominent role in the newly formed Interim Governing Council (IGC), a body established to pave the way for parliamentary elections and the drafting of a constitution. Divisions between various Shia factions had already surfaced. Humanitarian groups in Iraq had reported tit-for-tat kidnappings between factions as a means of political coercion and intimidation. The situation had been exacerbated by the 10 April 2003 murder of a prominent Shia cleric from a highly revered religious family outside the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf. Abdul-Majid Al-Khoei -- who had urged Iraq's Shia community to desist from pursuing vendettas against other Iraqis and preached moderate views and tolerance of US and UK forces -- was cut to pieces by unknown assailants. A young cleric by the name of Moqtada Al-Sadr, whose highly revered family was allegedly persecuted by the Baathists, was suspected of the murder. At the time The Guardian sounded an ominous warning of times to come: "Al-Khoei's murder also raises the frightening prospect that the old glue which bonded southern Iraqi society together may be decomposing. That a cleric of such a revered name should be murdered inside the sacred enclosure bodes ill for the future." On 29 August 2003, Baqir Al-Hakim was himself killed, along with 95 others, in almost the same spot in the first of many car bombings. Although Ali Al-Sistani remained the most revered imam and the highest Shia authority in Iraq, Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim, immediately became the most powerful man in the Shia community, commanding SCIRI, the Badr Brigades and a leading role in the IGC. As the IGC quickly moved to purge the Interior Ministry, police and Defence Ministry of Baathists, Al-Hakim moved cadres of his Badr Brigades into leading positions. The Badr became a key security outfit in the post-Saddam Iraq with many of its members in the new mukhabarat (secret police), commando units, and Iraqi army. The US has in recent weeks said it has evidence of the Interior Ministry allowing members of the Badr to operate secret death squads assigned to the task of assassinating key Sunni figures. Sunni politicians have for months accused the Interior Ministry and the police force of complicity in abducting and executing Sunnis. In the summer of 2003, Moqtada Al-Sadr was also building a powerful base and support network. Son of Grand Ayatollah Mohamed Sadeq Al-Sadr and son-in-law of Grand Ayatollah Mohamed Baqir Al-Sadr, the young and inexperienced cleric moved quickly to influence the vox populi of the Iraqi street. While violence, instability and looting dominating throughout most of Iraq, his supporters (now resembling a ragtag militia) took over Saddam City -- a rather impoverished suburb of Baghdad -- renaming it Sadr City, and assumed security and food distribution responsibilities. Despite his almost overnight surge in popularity, the chubby Al-Sadr who spoke with a lisp was dismissed as an inexperienced cartoon character; an unstable junior member of the Shia religious hierarchy with no power to issue fatwas, or religious decrees. As the ranks of his impromptu militia grew, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, called him "an outlaw". But Al-Sadr was hardly the comic figure many made him out to be. By September 2003, he had declared Bremer's rule in Iraq illegitimate and that occupying US forces must leave at once. He deemed the IGC an inefficient grouping of "non-believers" who carried out orders according to US bidding. He also announced the need for an Islamic army to protect Iraq. This, of course, later came to be called the Mahdi Army; an ill-equipped, untrained assembly of former members of the Iraqi army (mostly deserters), disgruntled youth, and several Iraqis who had returned from refugee status in Iran. In spring 2004, tensions came to a head when Bremer ordered Al-Sadr's newspaper -- Al-Hawza -- closed for inciting resistance against US forces. Fierce clashes between Al-Sadr and US forces continued for weeks in Sadr City and Najaf, further escalating the by now full-blown Iraqi resistance in other parts of the country. Al-Sadr's anti-occupation and anti-US stance earned him respect from other Sunni-led resistance fighters who at one point infiltrated Najaf and fought alongside the Shia Mahdi Army. Al-Sadr is said to have responded in kind when US forces attacked Falluja during the same period. All of a sudden, Sunni towns exhibited banners proclaiming alliance to Al-Sadr. The CPA responded to Al-Sadr's threat by saying it would apprehend or kill him, and issued an arrest warrant for his alleged involvement in the murder of Abdul-Majid Al-Khoei a year earlier. Al-Sadr moved quickly to counter suspicion of his alleged role by appealing to Shia loyalties. "I will be the striking hand of Ayatollah Al-Sistani and will help liberate my Iraqi brothers and sisters. I call on my Sunni (sic) brothers to continue their valiant resistance against the brutal occupiers," Al-Sadr said in a statement carried on Al-Jazeera. By reaching out to Al-Sistani, he automatically acknowledged that he is a junior member of the hierarchy and that he owes allegiance to Iraq's Shia Marjaaiya, thereby recruiting nearly 12 million Iraqi Shias to his cause. Furthermore, he also acknowledged the Sunni resistance -- the first time any Shia cleric had publicly done so -- positioning himself as a nationalist alternative to SCIRI. The Najaf "uprising" ended in late August 2004 when a ceasefire was declared and Al-Sadr agreed to disband his militia. However, they did not disband but merely integrated into Iraq's fledgling police force and security apparatus. By the end of 2005, Al-Sadr had expressed his intention to partake in the political process after several times saying free elections could not be held under the yoke of an occupying force. In the latest elections, his newly re- organised and politicised supporters (former Mahdi Army initiates) won 30 seats in the yet-to-convene parliament, nicknaming themselves the Sadrist bloc. When mosques were attacked in the aftermath of the Askariya bombing, many pointed the finger of blame at Al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. The US military has also accused the Mahdi Army of having infiltrated the Iraqi Army and security forces. Such accusations have proven to be a headache for the troubled Iraqi government and prompted Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr Solagh to say a plan was being drawn up to disband the militias. Whether this can be effectively implemented as Iraqis struggle to form a government remains to be seen.
