Monday, August 30, 2004

Seems to me I just said that

Just on Saturday I was suggesting that the Madhi Army is outgrowing Moqtada al-Sadr and wondering how much control he actually had over it as opposed to functioning as a rallying point, an organizational logo, if you will. A test of that, I said, will be seeing if the militiamen really do turn in their weapons as he told them to.

From the BBC for August 28:
Correspondents say many of Mr Sadr's fighters left with their weapons, or concealed them in different parts of the city.

"They will hide their weapons but will not hand them over to the police or to the army..." his spokesman Sheikh Ahmed Shaibani told AFP news agency.

"They will be able to go back to their work whilst remaining an army."
So not only didn't they do as they were told, Sadr's office is already admitting they didn't do as they were told and acting like that's what they meant all along.

That didn't take long.

Footnote: Mysterious indeed are the ways of paranoia. As a result of his mediation in Najaf, al-Sistani is beng denounced as a "collaborator with the occupation" by contributors to a Russian website, wandering dazedly in a haze of revolutionary daydreaming. And at the same time we have the blogger Cosmic Iguana, who in effect labels Sistani a shill for Sadr.
Al Sadr has 9 lives, it seems as long as Sistani is around. ... And more U.S. soldiers have died for nothing as Sistani's brilliant non-violent campaign has undercut the U.S. just when it had Al-Sadr's men cornered.
"Blessed are the peacemakers" for they shall be reviled by both sides.

(In fairness, Cosmici earlier compared Sistani's involvement with the Salt March organized by Gandhi in 1930 in terms of undercutting the legitimacy of the occupier. But still....)

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