Sadrist Movement

No militia has disarmed.

And those militias that have voiced some willingness to hand over some of their weapons, etc., you know, be merged into the Ministry of Defense, which is Saraya Salam, which is a Sadrist militia.

It's not even backed by Iran.

And then Hasaib and Qatayb Imam Ali.

Uh, this week we're gonna start off by talking to Inna Rudov about her new book from Manchester University Press called Iraq's Shia Warriors: From Battlefield to Parliament.

Uh, this is a really fascinating book that digs into the diversity of the origins, the motivations, the institutional place of the various armed, uh, uh, Shia factions in Iraq, including the, the Hashd, but also the Sadrists, and a whole range of actors that are involved in various forms of civic, military, and political activity inside Iraq.

It's deeply researched and quite theoretically nuanced, and I'm especially delighted to lead off the season with, uh, uh, Inna's book because she's a recipient of one of our, uh, small research grants.

We, uh, pr- we he- held a book workshop for her at a later stage, and then she also contributed to a special issue that, uh, that we produced, uh, on Islamists in war scapes.

So they left Hashad.

And then the organization that is part of the Sadrist movement.

So they are technically part of Hashad.

But at the same time, Muqtada al-Sadr is now, you know, he presents, he portrays himself as an Iraqi nationalist.

So Saraya al-Salam, that's what his militia is.

So al-Sadr is a very influential person, but he has a troublesome relationship with PMF.

So the exit of the Sistani factions and the troubles between PMF leadership and the Sadrists Leave Hashad clearly in the hands of the pro-Iran militias.

Right.

And then in, um, I always get the dates confused, 2009, I believe, uh, in March, uh, uh, my, my boss taps me on the shoulder yet again [laughs] and says, "What are you doing in, in a couple weeks?" And he sends me out.

Um, and it turned out to be the, uh, uh, Sadrist uprising.

Um, so over a six-week period, um, beginning in March, we called it March Madness, uh, the Sadrists, uh, just, uh, r- both rose in the south.

They, they captured whole swaths of, of the southern parts of Iraq.

Basra, um, Najaf, and, uh, Sadr City rose.

And I, huh, I, I don't wanna use the word resolved because obviously this, this particular issue was never entirely resolved, but how was that vignette resolved as far as the, the actual combat?

Uh, well, they, uh, between the, uh...

I, I don't have the statistics in front of me, but, but, you know, dozens of US military died in the quelling of the Sadrists uprising, and hundreds of Iraqi soldiers, uh, were also killed, and then, you know, the, the enemy com- you know, KIA would've been in the thousands.

And a lot of Americans went in there, just didn't understand that there were groups ready to go on the opposition side.

The Sadrists, and they have a base of 2 million people in a slum in one area of Baghdad, which we never even, our soldiers really sort of stayed out of because that was sort of their own base.

And the Sadrists were ready to go after anybody that was against their power and sovereignty.

The Badr Brigades, which had been sitting in Iran, they were exiles from Iraq during the Saddam era.

They were ready to come into the country, and they had a plan really about how to gain power.

Where the Sadrists had more of a popular movement based on poor Shia, the Badr Brigades, again, a Shia group, they had a plan to capture sections of the Iraqi government.

Namely, the one thing they wanted was the Ministry of the Interior.

This is the national police, basically.