IRAQ: Ayatollah Sistani on the Mahdi Army: “the law is the only authority in the country”

With the Iraqi government applying pressure to the Sadrist movement and Muqtada al Sadr to disband the Mahdi Army, Iraq’s senior Shia cleric has weighed in on the issue. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most revered Shia cleric in Iraq, backed the government’s position that the Mahdi Army should surrender its weapons and said he never consulted with Sadr on disbanding the Mahdi Army. Instead, the decision to disband the Mahdi Army is Sadr’s to make.

Sistani spoke through Jalal el Din al Saghier, a senior leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a rival political party to the Sadrist movement. Saghier was clear that Sistani did not sanction the Mahdi Army and called for it to disarm.

"Sistani has a clear opinion in this regard; the law is the only authority in the country," Saghier told Voices of Iraq, indicating Sistani supports Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and the government in the effort to sideline the Mahdi Army. "Sistani asked the Mahdi army to give in weapons to the government."

Sadr did not consult with Sistani on the issue of disbanding the Mahdi Army, disputing a claim from Sadrist spokesmen who intimated Iraqi’s top cleric told Sadr to maintain his militia. "The top Shiite cleric had not been consulted in establishing the Mahdi Army, so [he] could not interfere in dissolving it,” Saghier said. “Whosoever established the al-Mahdi army has to dissolve it; Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr established this army and it is only him who has to dissolve it."

Sistani’s statements are the latest in a series of moves to politically isolate the Sadrist movement and delegitimize the Mahdi Army.

From the Flopping Aces Blog:

Sistani Tells Sadr To Lay Down Arms

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First there was this:

Iraq’s top Shiite religious leaders have told anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr not to disband his Mehdi Army, an al-Sadr spokesman said Monday amid fresh fighting in the militia’s Baghdad strongholds.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki demanded Sunday that the cleric disband his militia, which waged two uprisings against U.S. troops in 2004, or see his supporters barred from public office.
But al-Sadr spokesman Salah al-Obeidi said al-Sadr has consulted with Iraq’s Shiite clerical leadership “and they refused that.” He did not provide details of the talks.

Then this:

The official spokesman for al-Sadr’s office on Monday denied that Shiite Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had referred the dissolution of al-Mahdi army to Shiite clerics, describing reports in this regard as inaccurate.
“Shiite Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr did not think of dissolving al-Mahdi army,” Sheikh Salah al-Ubeidi told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI), noting that “we have no right to interfere in freezing or dissolving al-Mahdi army because it is an exclusive right of Muqtada al-Sadr.”

And finally this:

The influential Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr said his clerical advisers, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, rejected calls to disband the Mahdi Army.
Salah al-Obaidi, the spokesman for Sadr, said the cleric issued his decision in a statement following a meeting with Sistani and Ayatollah Kazem al-Haeri in Qom, Iran.
The statement reiterated Sadr’s call for an end to the apparent politically motivated violence in Iraq by urging all parties to solve their issues through comprehensive dialogue, Voices of Iraq said.

The same spokesperson said Sistani did not want the Sadr thugs disbanded, then denied Sadr had even asked Sistani, and now he is back to saying that Sistani wants them to stay whole.

But wait:

With the Iraqi government applying pressure to the Sadrist movement and Muqtada al Sadr to disband the Mahdi Army, Iraq’s senior Shia cleric has weighed in on the issue. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most revered Shia cleric in Iraq, backed the government’s position that the Mahdi Army should surrender its weapons and said he never consulted with Sadr on disbanding the Mahdi Army. Instead, the decision to disband the Mahdi Army is Sadr’s to make.
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Based on Sadr’s changing story I don’t put much weight on their version of events. So while Sistani is not telling Sadr to disband directly his statement that the law is the only authority in Iraq is powerful, and if true pretty much seals the fate of Sadr.
Meanwhile this story is quite interesting:

Iran’s state-run media have de facto confirmed that this was no spontaneous “uprising.” Rather, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tried to seize control of Iraq’s second-largest city using local Shiite militias as a Trojan horse.
Tehran’s decision to make the gamble was based on three assumptions:
* Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wouldn’t have the courage to defend Basra at the risk of burning his bridges with the Islamic Republic in Iran.
* The international force would be in no position to intervene in the Basra battle. The British, who controlled Basra until last December, had no desire to return, especially if this meant getting involved in fighting. The Americans, meanwhile, never had enough troops to finish off al-Qaeda-in-Iraq, let alone fight Iran and its local militias on a new front.
* The Shiite clerical leadership in Najaf would oppose intervention by the new Iraqi security forces in a battle that could lead to heavy Shiite casualties.
The Iranian plan - developed by Revolutionary Guard’s Quds (Jerusalem) unit, which is in charge of “exporting the Islamic Revolution” - aimed at a quick victory. To achieve that, Tehran spent vast sums persuading local Iraqi security personnel to switch sides or to remain neutral.
The hoped-for victory was to be achieved as part of a massive Shiite uprising spreading from Baghdad to the south via heartland cities such as Karbala, Kut and al-Amarah. A barrage of rockets and missiles against the “Green Zone” in Baghdad and armed attacks on a dozen police stations and Iraqi army barracks in the Shiite heartland were designed to keep the Maliki government under pressure.

There is much more at the link including detailed descriptions of the fighting and the fact that Iran underestimated Maliki. They did not believe he would take the fight to Basra, they gambled….and lost.

More from the Blogosphere (Strata Sphere:

Sistani Does Join Maliki And Isolates Sadr

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Bumped to Top, More Updates Below!

I posted the news yesterday that Iraq Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani had basically thrown Mookie Sadr under the bus and sided with the Iraqi government of Maliki, and then waited all day to see any secondary reporting the act. None came but Sadr did have spokesman come out and claim Sistani had told him to keep his Mahdi Army. It seems Sadr lied (and the SurrenderMedia bought it hook-line-sinker and bobber). Bill Roggio has the confirming news, so far the SurrenderMedia is embarrassingly mum:

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And now the SurrenderMedia needs ask itself why it allowed itself to be dupes for a two-bit thug like Sadr. Why did they report propaganda that could not be confirmed. Why did they buy into the implausible, since Sistani has been against the militias for a long time and has been a supporter of the new Iragi government since its creation. Why would the liberal media defy all that history and run with Sadr’s cow manure?

Was it to give a boost to the Surrendercrats in Congress? Is our media willing to pass on lies to the American people as fact? Lies promulgated by a thug whose minions are killing US soldiers as we speak? At some point a price must be paid for this kind of support to our enemies, accidental or not.

If the SurrenderMedia and Surrendercrats don’t do some hard soul searching on how they are the useful puppets of the killers of our people, then America will do the soul searching and decide what to do about this terribly screwed up situation. We don’t need people echoing the lies of murderers of Americans, just to give them more cause to murder more Americans.

In related news Petraeus told Congress the actions against Sadr’s Mahdi Militia could take months. Then again the thug could collapse much quicker now that he is clearly working against the Shiite spiritual leaders.

Also, the UK SurrenderMedia is all miffed that Maliki snubbed UK forces when it needed some back up in Basra.

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Update: As we learn more (and ignore the myopic media) we see that the Basra move was, as I said a while back, an effort by Iran to take control of the port city of Basra - something Iran has been trying to do for decades.:

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But the blindfolded media and liberals claim Iran is perfectly reasonable and are not involved in Iraq. In fact, Barack Obama wants to sit down to tea with the Mad Mullahs and Ahmedinejad (God’s messenger, so he claims) and chat about Iraq. No wonder they tried to grab the southern part of Iraq before our elections. H/T to reader Kathie

Update: Make sure to check out the interview with Bill Roggio at Front Page:

FP: So what about the news reports that indicated that the U.S. and the Iraqi Security Forces’ Basra offensive against Sadr was a failure?
Roggio: The reports of the death of the Iraqi Army in Basrah were widely exaggerated. The Iraqi Army and police met some stiff resistance in the opening days, but the media jumped to call this failure. Prime Minister Maliki did not plan well for the operation and jumped the gun on its execution by months (it was to be carried out in July). An Iraqi Army brigade fresh out of basic training was thrown into the fight and cracked - about 500 troops “underperformed or deserted” according to the New York Times, and 400 police deserted. But the other estimated 44,500 Iraqi security forces in Basrah held.
The Iraqi command rushed in reinforcements - about 1 Division or 7,000 troops, and by the weekend the Iraqi security forces began to get the upper hand. Then Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army to leave the streets. By the end of the fighting, more than 500 Mahdi fighters were killed, about 1000 wounded and another 300 captured in the fighting in Basrah, Baghdad, and the great South, where the military performed well against the Mahdi Army.
…
FP: What role is Iran playing? This whole face-off revealed Iranian military intervention in Iraq to be a given, right?
Roggio: To streamline operations in Iraq, Iran’s Qods Force established a unified command, called the Ramazan Corps, and split Iraq into three roughly geographical regions. I obtained a detailed description of the Ramazan Corps’ command and control network, storage and distribution facilities, training camps, and ratlines – or supply lines – into Iraq last fall.
The Ramazan Corps is a military command with senior Qods Force generals in charge. They direct the flow of weapons, cash, and the deadly rockets, mortars, and explosively formed projectiles into the hands of the Special Groups working in Iraq. The Ramazan Corps also brings Iraqi fighters in Iran to train them, and runs training camps inside Iraq as well.
The Times Online just released information that the Ramazan Corps “were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces” during the recent fighting in Basrah. “Some were directing operations on the ground.” This should come as no surprise to anyone following Iranian activities inside Iraq or have an understanding of the Ramazan Corps. Iran is fighting a thinly veiled, undeclared war against both the Iraqi people and the United States.

IF the news media were truly journalists and not propagandists this news would be headlines across the nation. The view from the region is Sadr and the Mahdi Army are toast - definitely read this one!

The young Shiite leader’s sin is that he did not find out from the start, and perhaps still has not found out, how Iran used him to deepen the sectarian divide in Iraq, despite his moderate stance in this respect. His pursuit of revenge from the “Baathists,” the followers of Saddam, who killed his father and uncle, has turned into an out of control, generalized campaign of sectarian eradication. Iran’s objective for adopting, arming and financing Al-Sadr’s militia was to create a “balance of terror” with Sunni dissidents seeking to defend their position and interests in the new system. Consequently, the “Mahdi Army” that grouped fighters from every impoverished region of Iraq, including some criminal gangs, turned into security groups led, controlled, and directed by Iranian intelligence, which took advantage of decades of social and political oppression.

The media and liberal ‘experts’ really screwed up on this one. How many mulligans do these people get before they are tossed out of the game?

Update: How long can the media hide the truth about how Sistani just threw Sadr to the sharks:

“Al-Sistani has a clear opinion in this regard; the law is the only authority in the country,” al-Saghier told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq (VOI).
“The top Shiite cleric had not been consulted in establishing al-Mahdi army, so it could not interfere in dissolving it,” he added.
“Whosoever established the al-Mahdi army has to dissolve it,” he underlined.
“Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr established this army and it is only him who has to dissolve it,” he explained.
“Al-Sistani asked al-Mahdi army to give in weapons to the government,” the Shiite official said.

Now, will Sadr do as he was asked by the Grand Ayatollah? H/T Protein Wisdom.

Posted by AJStrata on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 10:37 am.

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