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May. 11th, 2009 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadger23/50: Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq by Patrick Cockburn.
A fascinating book giving a good deal of background to the story of the al-Sadr family and the latest scion's rise to political power following the American invasion. I think Cockburn is a little too close to his subject, in that he works so hard to overcome the (admittedly foolish and myopic) view of Muqtada al-Sadr put out by the US and often accepted wholesale by the media that he doesn't question Muqtada's account of himself quite closely enough. He ends up being, in fact, self-contradictory in places, pooh-poohing with vigour in one chapter the US fears of Iranian influence in the Jaish al-Mahdi and then in the next detailing interviews with adherents who boast of their training and equipment from Iran.
Still, if taken with a grain of salt, I think this is a very good introduction to the recent history and politics of Shi'a Iraq and to the reasons that the US has had so much difficulty working with the Sadrists. It also provides a much more Iraqi POV (though still through the eyes of a foreign journalist) on the events of the last six years and the very complex relationships within the Iraqi Shi'a religious community and between it and it's Iranian counterpart. One of the next books on CD I've picked up is Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War by Anthony Shadid, which I'm hoping will provide even more Iraqi perspective.
A fascinating book giving a good deal of background to the story of the al-Sadr family and the latest scion's rise to political power following the American invasion. I think Cockburn is a little too close to his subject, in that he works so hard to overcome the (admittedly foolish and myopic) view of Muqtada al-Sadr put out by the US and often accepted wholesale by the media that he doesn't question Muqtada's account of himself quite closely enough. He ends up being, in fact, self-contradictory in places, pooh-poohing with vigour in one chapter the US fears of Iranian influence in the Jaish al-Mahdi and then in the next detailing interviews with adherents who boast of their training and equipment from Iran.
Still, if taken with a grain of salt, I think this is a very good introduction to the recent history and politics of Shi'a Iraq and to the reasons that the US has had so much difficulty working with the Sadrists. It also provides a much more Iraqi POV (though still through the eyes of a foreign journalist) on the events of the last six years and the very complex relationships within the Iraqi Shi'a religious community and between it and it's Iranian counterpart. One of the next books on CD I've picked up is Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War by Anthony Shadid, which I'm hoping will provide even more Iraqi perspective.
