Radical cleric ignored as he built up army

BAGHDAD — The brooding, bearded young man stared at the ground during the interview, his words seething with anger at the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority and its handpicked Governing Council.

He minced no words about his intentions.

“Why give the Governing Council a chance? To prove what?” Muqtada al-Sadr asked during a rare interview last year in his cramped Najaf office. “We’ll create our own government, set up our own Governing Council and create our own army called Mahdi’s Army.”

After trying to ignore him for months, Iraq’s American administrator, L. Paul Bremer, yesterday branded the ambitious 30-year-old preacher an outlaw.

But for more than a year, Mr. al-Sadr has been building his base of supporters, making his views known and solidifying his organization to make himself one of the most powerful political figures in postwar Iraq.

Last summer, coalition officials all but ignored his call to create Mahdi’s Army — a black-clad militia named after Shi’ite Islam’s 12th imam, whose messianic return, Shi’ites believe, will herald a new age.

Mr. al-Sadr, whose famous clerical father and uncle were both killed under Saddam Hussein’s rule, taps into the simmering rage of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, who have been locked out of economic and political power for decades.

But he also appeals to Iraqi nationalists uncomfortable with the Western role in their country. He and his network of preachers frequently call for Iraqi Sunnis and Shi’ites to unite against the Americans.

After his entrance onto the public scene last year, Mr. al-Sadr quieted down, eclipsed by the emergence of the moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani as the undisputed spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shi’ite community.

Ayatollah al-Sistani, although critical of the U.S. presence and plans for handing power to its handpicked group of Iraqis, always has called for peaceful protest.

Mr. al-Sadr and his followers, meanwhile, have been busy organizing an army.

Since its formation in July, Mahdi’s Army has recruited thousands of followers at mosques and offices throughout Baghdad and the country’s south. Young men and women lined up in droves, committing themselves to fighting for Mr. Sadr’s ideals.

Mr. Sadr inherited his father’s Martyr Sadr Foundation, with its network of properties, and he has used them to expand his influence throughout the country.

Mr. Sadr’s followers began the latest unrest after one of his deputies was arrested and his weekly newspaper shut down by coalition authorities, who accuse Mr. Sadr of subverting Iraq’s new order.

But Mr. Sadr, in an interview and in countless Friday sermons in the Shi’ite town of Kufa, has made it clear from the start that his goal is to undermine the American order.

“First we will be forming our own constitution; then we will hold a referendum, separate from the Americans,” he said in the interview. “Then we will establish our own government with our own ministers, separate from the Americans.”