By Goodhope Dlangamandla
01:09:2022

Muqtada Al Sadr’s resignation shook things up in Iraq this week as it witnessed deaths, instability, and clashes.

Al Sadr handed in his resignation letter this week, which led his followers to wreak havoc in the green zone that claimed 23 lives died due to the violence caused by his resignation from politics.

Radio Islam International discussed this week’s media lens with Ibrahim Deen. He described the Iraq political system as an interesting one as it is a constitution that one would impose but also would take account of different ethnic groupings in the country.

He said it is similar to a consociational constitution where a Shia has to be a Prime Minister or the President. So the election is a coalition-based system.

He said that Muqtada threatened to resign because he had heard that the elections would go without him.

“He threatened to resign because he heard that the elections were going to go ahead without him. He resigned, and there were clashes, and now he is gone out of politics, but this has happened before,” he said.

Commenting on how the media has been covering the whole ordeal, he said the media look at it as violence in Iraq and instability in Iraq following an election, with minimal context on the elections itself on how the positions are the way they are, and how are they elected and appointed.

The media has been just looking at it as the Iranian versus Sadrists but not looking at the two different coalitions.

They also have not looked at Al Sadr as an Iraqi nationalist. If anything, he has always been the guy who opposed the Americans.

“There is no mention made that he is one of the few that stood out when the previous person was threatening Sadrists because he is more an Iraqi nationalist. Yes, he is a Shia cleric, but he is an Iraqi nationalist in that political system. And there’s. There has been contestation between Najaf and Kum over the control of Iraq for the past couple of hundred years. He wants Iraq to be Iraqi. And there had not been focused on that,’ said Deen.

He said that it seems like he will not be in the new coalition, but at least he will always be influential because he has a powerful faction allied with him and a popular person.

He added that his exit at the moment kind of means Iran would likely be able to remain largely dominant in the country, as it is very likely its fraction will now hold the most power and sway in the region.

Deen said that if they lose out, they will be forced to negotiate, as happened before.

[LISTEN] to the podcast here