This is good news.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- An Iraqi judge has issued a murder arrest warrant for a radical Shiite Muslim cleric, Muqtada Sadr, for the slaying of another Shiite leader shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of the country, coalition officials said Monday.

I had been wondering to myself (and overlooking the larger historical implications) "Who will rid us of this troublesome cleric?" Now, it appears that the Iraqi judiciary---hopefully it's a non-sharia court---has stepped up to the plate. At the same time, there is something of note here:

[Coalition spokesman Dan Senor] said the arrest warrant had been issued several months ago. He refused to say why Sadr had not been arrested earlier.

I suppose that the usual calculations went into the decision not to arrest Sadr earlier. These would probably include "Can we get him?", "Do we have enough evidence?", "Can we hold him?", "What will the repercussions be?" and so forth. It may be that, until the most recent clashes between Sadr's troops and Iraqi/Coalition forces, there may not have been appropriate isolation for him. What is isolation? Isolation from the sense of community that Iraq's Islamic population feels. We have to strike in such a way that the average Iraqi does not feel that, "The infidels are coming for Allah's faithful!" but rather that, "The Americans are getting a dirtbag. Good on them." I don't know what kind of reaction there was to the latest fighting, but it would seem that this was the tipping point. As always, we've got to be seen as helping the average Iraqi rid his society of bad guys, instead of reaching in from the outside to pluck out good guys.

At the same time, the "isolation" point may not have been reached. It is also possible that someone somewhere decided that, "Enough's enough" and made the warrant public, in order to try and advance the isolation effort. Either way, I hope that we soon capture this fellow, and on the cheap. I respect the right of religious-based dissent to the shape of the new Iraq, but I will not support policies that let violent thugs have a seat at the table.

Similarly, I am uncertain as to why these people need their own private militias at this point anyways. I understand that snap-of-the-fingers or wrinkle-of-the-nose disarmament is impossible and probably undesirable, but I would, if possible, suggest a policy that starts winding these groups up. They may be docile now, but they may be the seeds of sectarian (if that's the right word) strife and outright conflict in the future. Our interests in Iraq do not include such an outcome, and therefore the armed mullah militias must not stand.¹

There will be a backlash, of course. Iraqi and Coalition personnel will have to weather it in whatever fashion it comes and keep driving towards the ultimate goals of a stable democratic (i.e. no Islamic republic!) Iraq with regular free and fair elections. Think about the big picture.

¹ I do not understand the role (outside of "personal security") of these militia groups. I suppose they're similar to the Freikorps and other such street-fighting entities that existed in the Weimar Republic, but that doesn't authorize them at all. In fact, given the nastiness that such groups unleashed in that republic, I'd probably be inclined to do that much more to strangle them. It's just very difficult for me to accept the idea that religious leaders "need" gun-toting political militiamen. I can't really imagine anything like it here in America.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Kathryn Jean Lopez.

UPDATE: Grim's take on VIGILANT RESOLVE is intertwined with this; he says that the reason Shiites need an army in the Sadr City area is because there's lots of Sunnis around them. That makes sense at some level, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it when looking at the situation as a whole. Private religious armies are, I think, a bad thing.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 11:56 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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