Dilip Hiro at Tom Dispatch/Z-net on al-Sadr's growing strength, and the fact that he mobilized over a million demonstrators in a country exploding with war and irrational hatred and all kinds of shadowy weird violence - hundreds of thousands of pissed-off Iraqis, all in one place, demonstrating peacefully to end the occupation. Pretty radical.
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He has not been seen in public for months, but Monday's dramatic withdrawal of his supporters from the government shows that radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is still a dangerous force in Iraq.
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Radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has announced the withdrawal of his political bloc from the Iraqi government.
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Cars, minibuses and roadside bombs exploded in Shiite Muslim enclaves across the city Sunday, killing at least 45 people in sectarian violence that defied the Baghdad security crackdown, while a radical anti-U.S. cleric raised a new threat to Iraq's government.
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The radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers
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The political movement of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr today ordered
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The al-Sadr bloc leader, Nassar al-Rubaiy'i, said today that as long as U.S. forces were in Iraq, the government could not stop the violence. He said Iraqi people want U.S. troops to leave but al-Maliki's government does not listen.
"The most important reason, sadly, is the non-response of Prime Minister al-Maliki to the demonstration of a million [people], staged by the Iraqi people in the province of holy Al-Najaf, while [al-Maliki] directly demanded that the occupation forces remain," al-Rubay'i said. "And since al-Maliki gained his position as a result of a parliamentary system, he is asked to reflect the will of Iraqi people."
