Word: moqtada
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...method in Moqtada Sadr's madness can best be seen in the list of people lining up to mediate an end to the standoff in Najaf. At last count, they included not only a delegation from the national conference in Baghdad convened to appoint an interim legislature, but also UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and even Pope John Paul II. Sadr may be vowing to fight to the finish against a combined U.S.-Iraqi force that vastly outnumbers and outguns his own, but in the process he's taken center-stage in the battle to shape post-Saddam Iraq. Indeed...
...Sadr may have hedged his bets. The Financial Times reports that even as the showdown continues at Najaf, Moqtada's Baghdad representative has in fact been participating in the national conference. Not only that; according to the FT he's also co-sponsoring an "opposition" list of delegates for the interim national assembly in alliance with an unlikely bedfellow - the former Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi, who has reacted to his fall from favor in Washington (and his legal troubles with the new government in Baghdad) by seeking to reinvent himself as a champion of the Shiite masses...
...Despite cloaking himself in the mantle of defender of the holy places, Moqtada Sadr has little claim to religious authority. He lacks the theological status of a Marjah ("object of emulation") like the Grand Ayatollahs, and there are questions over just how much seminarian learning he has under his belt. Sadr is, in other words, purely a political leader - and one quietly reviled by much of the clerical leadership. But operating in secret under Saddam's rule, he built a mass following among the Shiite urban poor, trading on the reverence for his father and grandfather, legendary rebel clerics murdered...
...latest cease-fire in Najaf may be a telling measure of the political balance of forces in the new Iraq. Having launched an armored offensive into the Shiite holy city after vowing to destroy Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi militia, U.S. commanders abruptly called a halt to offensive operations on Friday as truce negotiations between Sadr and the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi continued. But a new truce wasn't exactly what Allawi and the Americans had in mind when they vowed earlier in the week to finish the fight and break the back of Sadr's forces...
...Moqtada Sadr's exhortations to battle, his willingness to extend the confrontation throughout southern Iraq and also into Baghdad, and the failure thus far of all efforts to cajole him back into a truce, suggest the firebrand cleric is feeling lucky. By inviting the U.S. military to invade the spiritual epicenter of Iraqi Shiism, the new government risks fatally undermining its prospects for establishing legitimacy among Iraq's majority community. Even though the Sadrists have provoked the confrontation, the prevailing animosity towards the U.S. forces among ordinary Shiites will likely play to Moqtada's advantage in his political challenge...