By HIBA DAWOOD UPI Correspondent The independent Kitabat Newspaper said in its editorial Friday that the Sadr movement is playing many roles in the current violence in Basra and other cities.
The editorial, with the headline "Why does the Mahdi Army fight the government forces?" said the Sadr movement follows many contradictory behaviors.
"The Sadr movement is an unstable part of Maliki's government and, similar to many other political blocs in the Iraqi government, lacks a clear definition as its leadership is religious whereas its members in Parliament are political," it said.
It also said the mixture of politics and religion is a schizophrenic obstacle faced by the Iraqi government because it results in political paralysis. It added that though the Sadr movement manages several ministries, it is still affected by long-term oppression of Shiites.
It also said the Sadr movement is neither with nor against the government, which gives it the character of being contradictory because its members are involved in the government while at the same time they fight its forces.
"This contradiction is seen when defining the Sadr movement, a political bloc in the Parliament headed by Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, and the Mahdi Army, a militia led by Sadr as well," it said.
The paper said the Mahdi Army is playing with the tactical definition of the term "army." It said the theoretical definition is that the Mahdi Army is an ideological organization, while now amid escalating violence in Baghdad, Basra and elsewhere, it is defined as a professional army with its own intelligence and equipment.
The Sadr movement and its Mahdi Army use twin strategies, and their spokesmen address Sadrists as if addressing all the people of Iraq and vice versa, a policy Saddam Hussein followed when he addressed the Baath Party using the name of the Iraqi people.
The paper gave another example of the Sadr movement's members' duality of policies.
"When they withdraw from the government, they call it 'the government of occupation' and when they re-enrolled in it, they call it 'the government of Iraq,'" it said.
The paper said that one of the mistakes of the Sadr movement is unfixable: It consists of unstable elements of society that rely on tribal principles and lack education but are given weapons to accomplish missions.
"The great fighting in Basra today against the Mahdi Army, which closed entrances and exits on the Iraqi forces, reflects the defect is not in government, including in Saddam Hussein's, but in its people," the paper said.
Kitabat concluded that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has to get rid of the religious environment that is capable of inventing such tensions and struggles as the Mahdi Army.
