Today (-ish) Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki issued an ultimatum to Shiite Cleric/Major Opposition Figure Moqtada al-Sadr: Either Sadr disbands his Mahdi Army, or he and his party forfeit the right to stand for election. A moderately spooky press release from a Sadr “spokesman” published in Iran offers the notion that doing so might be unconstitutional.*
I am not a scholar of the Iraqi Constitution, but I think that there might be some merit to such a claim in this instance. If a President unilaterally barring someone from election isn’t illegal it definitely should be.
The principle here is simple. As we should have learned from Vietnam, anti-democratic actions do not often have democratic results. If Sadr and his Members of the Iraqi Parliament are cast out, it will empower them. It will make their claims against the Maliki government more serious, and more legitimate. And it may well drive Sadr under the wing of Iranian clerics whose interests are not those of the Iraqi people.
The right answer here isn’t pretty. The Iraqi government must make a deal with the Sadrists. Only then can they reduce the tension between the parties that is fueling the Mahdi Army, the Badr Brigade, and the drive to find support in Iran’s clerical community.
Sure.
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*Al-Alam News, to which I linked above, is apparently an Arabic-language news service based in Iran. Bear in mind reading the release that the CIA World Factbook indicates that 3% of Iranians are ethnically Arab, and that 1% of Iranians speak primarily Arabic. Compare that with 51% of Iranians claiming Persian heritage and 58% of Iranians speaking Persian and Persian dialects (24% of Iranians are Azeri and 26% speak Turkic and Turkic dialects). However, Iran is also 98% Muslim, the practice of which requires at bear minimum the memorization of a great deal of Arabic.
My interpretation of all of these damnable facts is that Al-Alam News is likely more popular with more religious or more Arab Iranians. Oh, yeah, and most Iraqis.
Why Iraq? Al-Alam broadcasts one of the few round-the-clock television channels that can be received by most Iraqis without a satellite dish.