New Front in Iraqi War: Rival Shiite Government Forming
Sadr is the son of a highly respected Shiite cleric who was assassinated in Najaf in 1999. The extent of his own following, however, is not clear. Unlike several more senior clerics, he favors establishing a theocracy similar to that of Iran, a government fashioned by and answerable to unelected religious figures.The Governing Counsel still holds some ground in Iraq, but this guy might undercut the whole process. This is what happens when you don't do post-war planning, or worse, when you do post-war planning and then shelf the plan.
In addition to ministries of Interior, Justice and Foreign Affairs, for example, Sadr's cabinet will include a ministry for the "prevention of vice and promotion of virtue," Abdel Hadi Daraji, a Sadr aide, said in an interview Saturday.
Daraji said rules on vice and virtue, as interpreted from the Koran, would be enforced by the militia that Sadr organized in the weeks after Baghdad fell to coalition forces. Its members still patrol sections of Sadr City, home to 3 million mostly poor Shiites.
"You know very well that there is a connection between the military and the political," said Daraji, who called the United States "a terrorist organization" during Friday prayers outside Sadr's headquarters in Baghdad.
"The imam's army is the military side," Daraji said, "and the cabinet is the political side."
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