Home pagePress CenterIn the Media Rick Barton, cordirector of the CSIS Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, was quoted by USA Today, "All Eyes on al-Sadr as Iraq Violence Swells."
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Rick Barton, cordirector of the CSIS Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, was quoted by USA Today, "All Eyes on al-Sadr as Iraq Violence Swells."
As a young seminary student, his nickname was Mulla Atari, because he preferred video games to studying the Quran. Now, Muqtada al-Sadr is a radical cleric revered by millions of poor Shiites as a modern-day Robin Hood. He also may be the most powerful man in Iraq.
The recent spike in violence here has shown that the enigmatic Shiite cleric and his Mahdi Army militia continue to have the muscle to plunge Iraq into warfare — and essentially reverse recent security gains made by the U.S. military that the Bush administration cites as a key sign of progress. Or as he did in August, al-Sadr can stop much of the bloodshed by ordering a cease-fire — and win some credit from the U.S. military for the resulting calm.
"It's hard to tell whether al-Sadr is the key to progress in Iraq, or America's sworn enemy," says Rick Barton, an adviser to the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan commission set up by Congress that recommended withdrawing from Iraq last year. "These are big questions that remain unanswered." Read the article
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