Mokie's murky timetable for US departure

NY Times:

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For the last month, from a secret location, the young Shiite cleric has fanned the flames of Iraqi nationalism and anti-American sentiment, a sure path to popularity in his frightened, frustrated land.

He organized a protest that drew tens of thousands of people to the Shiite holy city of Najaf to demand an end to the American military presence. They burned American flags and chanted, “Death to America!” Then, last week, he withdrew his six cabinet ministers from the government, complaining that it was not doing enough to rid the country of the Americans.

But press his aides for concrete details of a timetable to present to the Americans, and the picture becomes murkier. They say they want the Americans out. But not just yet.

“In order to drive out the occupation, we need to build up the security forces; then we can have a timetable,” said Abdul Mehdi Mutairi, one of Mr. Sadr’s top political officials, as he smoked at his desk inside the main Sadr office in Baghdad, his television tuned to an Iranian-financed satellite network. He was referring to the Iraqi government’s largely Shiite army and police, which by all accounts could not yet control Iraqi violence on their own.

The gap between Mr. Sadr’s public oratory and his actions shows that he, as much as any American or Iraqi official, is captive to the fact that there is no easy path to securing Iraq’s future. He does have a starkly plain vision — a centralized Islamist Iraq ruled by nationalist Shiites who are distanced from, if not openly hostile to, the United States. But he also has a problem all too familiar to the Bush administration: he does not know exactly how to realize his vision, given the complexities of the conflict.

He has become a great improviser, the Miles Davis of the war.

He publicly courts anti-American Sunni nationalists while his Mahdi Army militia kills Sunni Arabs. He denounces Shiite groups backed by Iran while he is said to be hiding in Iran and taking instructions from clerics there. He promotes Shiite unity while Mahdi fighters battle other Shiite groups in cities across the south, as they did this month in Diwaniya.

There is even widespread talk that he has ordered an elite wing of the Mahdi Army, known as the Thahabiya, or Golden Unit, to assassinate rogue militiamen from his own organization.

Last week, as his allies quit the cabinet, he said he could no longer work with the government. But he left his 30 legislators in the Parliament.

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His incoherent pattern reflects the weakness of his movement and the weakness of the Iraqi state. I think he is clearly overrated by the media and many Americans. He knows that his militia could not survive a confrontation with the US forces so he tells them to stand down during the surge. He also hopes that US forces will eliminate much of the Sunni opposition during the surge, which is what his militia was trying to do anyway. So while he supports the objectives of the surge, he can't embrace it politically. That he is in hiding also tells you something about his inherent weakness.