For Sadr, a Fracturing Militia
Divides Helping U.S. in Iraq Now but Could Cause Harm Later

By Ann Scott Tyson and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 29, 2007

Iraq's most powerful Shiite militia is increasingly splintering as radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- now believed to be in Iran -- faces fresh challenges to his leadership, according to senior Pentagon and administration officials.

In the near term, the deepening divides in Sadr's movement have contributed to a lull in fighting that is benefiting U.S. and Iraqi operations to secure Baghdad, where Shiite militia and death squads fomenting sectarian violence are considered the greatest threat to Iraq's stability, the officials said.

Yet the group's fracturing in the long run could make it harder to defeat militarily and could also complicate political reconciliation, they said.

"It's much more difficult to go after small, violent splinter groups than if you can get one organization to come in from the cold and reconcile," said a senior Pentagon official. "You have to fight with more people and kill more people, and it's much harder to bring them over to our side. The bright side is that, at least for the near term, they are keeping kind of quiet."

At least two Shiite rivals, with some internal support, have been jockeying to take over parts of Sadr's powerful Mahdi Army since he left for Iran earlier this year, officials say. Sadr has had trouble both leading and controlling his movement from afar, they said, as his absence has encouraged subordinates and earlier rivals to move in on his turf.

"It's clear that he does not control all the organization. There are splinter groups that don't answer and won't answer to him, particularly since he is in Tehran now," the senior Pentagon official said. While some officials think that Sadr -- who is the son of a famous ayatollah who was killed during Saddam Hussein's rule -- is in Tehran, others said he is in Qom, a center of religious learning with many ties to Iraqi clerics.

Sadr had already cracked down against rivals within his militia last August, as it grew difficult to rein in some of his commanders, U.S. officials said. The Mahdi Army, which was estimated last year to have 20,000 to 60,000 members, had become a franchise operation with factions that were failing to comply with orders or to pass money up the lines to headquarters, the officials added.

Last August, Sadr was specifically concerned about freelance fighting between some of his forces and other Shiite militias, notably the Badr Corps, and massive vengeance attacks against Sunnis for months after the February 2006 bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra, U.S. officials said.

In early August, Sadr purged undisciplined factional commanders not showing fealty, leaving the Mahdi Army smaller, tighter and more coherent, U.S. officials said. The streamlining was influenced in part by the Iranian government, which sought a unified front rather than a ragged array of militias fighting one another, the sources added.

Soon after President Bush's January announcement that he would be sending more U.S. troops to help the Iraqi government regain control over Baghdad, Sadr ordered his forces to lie low and not engage in shootouts with the Badr Corps or other rivals -- in what U.S. officials think was an effort to preserve his movement. In a sign that such orders still carry weight within the militia, fighting has indeed diminished. Since then, however, lower-level Sadr commanders as well as former rivals who were purged last year have started to make ambitious plays to assume leadership of the Mahdi Army, U.S. officials said.

Sadr's movement has never been entirely cohesive, and competition was evident as early as 2004 between factions more inclined toward violence and those that favored a political route to power. "The idea that this was ever a monolithic organization -- that was never really an accurate description," said a senior military official. Still, friction has increased, or at least become more public, since Sadr left Iraq, he said.

Sadr's "absence weakens the perception of him, and perceptions make a difference," said Lt. Col. James Gavrilis, a counterinsurgency expert at the Pentagon.

Divisions also are being exacerbated as elements of the Mahdi Army respond differently to the more aggressive U.S. and Iraqi military operations inside Baghdad.

"What has changed is their reaction to what we're doing," Gavrilis said. "If the senior council says 'Back off,' you may have area commanders saying, 'I don't agree with the policy.' They may say, 'We have to fight. We can't give in. We can't give up territory -- that shows we don't have control,' " he said. The U.S. military is attempting to track attacks by various factions but has not identified clear patterns, a military official said.

Last week, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates acknowledged growing friction among Sadr's followers but said he had not seen the impact of any splintering of military forces on the ground. "There clearly are divisions in the Sadrist movement, probably accentuated by Sadr's continuing absence from Iraq," he said at a Pentagon news conference. He said he had not seen evidence of Sadr militia forces going to Iran for training.