Muqtada al-Sadr announced new Militia

As the 'Eid al-Adha holiday, one of two major Muslim holidays, begins on Monday, papers are reporting on yet another “reorganization” of the Mahdi Army by Shi'a leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Since 2003, Muqtada’s movement and militia have undergone a consecutive series of restructurings, reorganizations and purges, with little evidence on the ground to show the effect of these projects. As a result, the militia previously known as the Mahdi Army has been given a new name after every such attempt: this time, Az-Zaman reported, Muqtada al-Sadr announced that the activist wing in his movement will now be known as the “Mumahhidoun,” which will acquire a “cultural” character, aiming to educate the young activists and “combat the secular currents.”

Judging from the newspaper report, the standards for admission into the “Mumahhidoun” are a bit strange for an ex-militia: Sadrist volunteers will have to progress through intensive educational courses, each lasting several months, before being accepted as a full member of the movement. Sadrist sources said that 300 “students” have been so far accepted out of 6000 applicants. Az-Zaman quoted sources who reiterated claims to the effect that Sadr wants to recreate the Lebanese Hizbollah model in Iraq with a bottom-up approach, hence the focus on producing disciplined and professional activists and purging unwanted elements.

In other news, Pan-Arab al-Hayat said that, with the deadline for the provincial elections approaching, electoral publicity and posters are now part of the urban Iraqi landscape. Notably, the paper pointed out, Sadrists have not posted any electoral material of their own, which confirms that Muqtada will not involve his movement in the elections directly, but will content “to support lists and personalities that he approves of.” The paper said that the lists of ex-Prime Minister Ibraheem al-Ja'fari seem to flourish in pro-Sadrist area, an indication of Ja'fari’s unwritten alliance with the Sadrists in the coming elections.

Meanwhile, IED attacks, especially against Iraqi security forces, continue to increase. Az-Zaman international said that over 34 individuals were injured in IED blast in Ba'quba, including the operational commander in the Diyala province and the governor of the city of Ba'quba. Another nine Iraqis (including two policemen) were reportedly injured in Mosul when a grenade was thrown at a Police patrol.

Al-'Arabiya news channel relayed comments by the vice-President Tariq al-Hashimi in which he volunteered to abandon his post in exchange for an ending to sectarian power-sharing deals in the political system. Al-Hashimi was quoted as saying that the sectarian political arrangement instituted after 2003 “has later proven its failure, and we do not have many more opportunities to waste.”

On a different theme, London-based al-Quds al-'Arabi said that the Kurdistan Regional Government is finally easing restrictions on Iraqis from outside the province and who wish to enter or live in the autonomous Region. One of the oft-criticized measures of the Kurdistan government was its imposition of stringent measures, including a required recommendation by a local guarantor(preferably an employee of the regional government,) and the obtainment of a residence permit – despite the fact that these would be Iraqis wishing to move within their own country.

These clearly unconstitutional measures were often invoked by PM al-Maliki during his recent clashes with Kurdish leaders, the paper noted, which probably prompted Kurdish officials to ease the restrictions in order to divert these criticisms.