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Email a friendRevisiting the al-Sadr clan
PATRICK COCKBURN'S reputation is well established. He has been reporting from Iraq since 1978 and is one of the few journalists who still travel courageously outside the fortified Green Zone without an armed escort.
He brings to this new book his personal experiences and knowledge of Iraq to chart the circumstances surrounding the rise of Muqtada al-Sadr, perhaps the most important politician in the country today.
Cockburn describes the book as a biography, though the profiles of other key players - Grand Ayatollah Sistani, Grand Ayatollah Khoei, Prime Minister Maliki etc - set against a modern history of the Iraq disaster are together given more attention than Muqtada's background and rise to power.
It is helpful to be guided through the al-Sadr clan, not least because it has exerted a powerful influence on many of the principal events of the last two decades.
Muqtada's greatest strengths are that he is the son of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr and the son-in-law and cousin of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, the two great martyrs in the modern history of the Shia. He has articulated their Islamic theology and adopted aspects of their personal behaviour, exhibiting a paradoxical air of gravitas and charisma that has even convinced some of his followers that he is the true redeemer for whose return the Shia have prayed for for more than 1,000 years.
As the principal leader of the Mahdi Army, Muqtada has shaped the resistance struggle since soon after the March 2003 invasion and today has a crucial bloc of representatives in the Iraqi parliament. Thus, he is both a military tactician and a political player of growing influence, at one time targeted by the US army for execution but now crucial to any success of the "surge."
If the Mahdi Army again launches a military campaign against the US occupation, casualties will soar and the absurd Bush claims will be finally exposed to all the world.
Cockburn is at his best when he draws on personal experience to chart the minutiae of the personalities involved in the Iraq catastrophe. By contrast, the background details in this book are thin.
The circumstances of the 1991 war are glossed over, little is said about the 2003 invasion, Bush and Blair are scarcely mentioned, the surge strategy of Petraeus is left out entirely and nothing is said about UN resolutions and the protracted dispute about WMD.
This book remains a journalistic work, with the strengths and weaknesses that this implies. Cockburn has few equals as a first-hand witness to unfolding events, but there are many books in the Iraq corpus that provide much more detailed information.
GEOFF SIMONS