Since the Bat­tle of Basra, the Sadrists are try­ing to mar­ket them­selves as a resis­tance fac­tion, even some­times as the only resis­tance fac­tion, some Iraqi and Arab media started to sup­port this approach, although every­one knows that Mahdi Army started their career by direct­ing their arms against the resistance.

After I reported about Nahd Hat­ter arti­cle were he con­sid­ers that what hap­pened in Basra is a Shi­ite pan-Arabism upris­ing, Iraqi writer Zaid al-Zubaidi stand against Hattar’s argu­ment saying:

If we say that Maliki imple­mented an Amer­i­can a spe­cific agenda .… then we should not hastily say that the Sadrists are rep­re­sent­ing a pan-Arabists trend against the Iran­ian influ­ence rep­re­sented by Al-Hakim and Maliki because when Al-Sadr is asked to dis­band Mahdi Army, he did not take an Iraqi or an Arab opin­ion, he turned to the Iran­ian supreme cler­ics in Najaf and Qum.

Iraqi Islamic Resis­tance Front [JAME] also issued a state­ment denounces Al-Sadr state­ments in Aljaz­era inter­view say­ing that it was decep­tive and mis­lead­ing the pub­lic opinion:

- Moq­tada Al-Sadr and his mil­i­tary wing, the so called “Mahdi Army” par­tic­i­pated in the polit­i­cal process estab­lished by the occu­pa­tion to beau­tify its agenda of Iraq’s destruc­tion, the Sadrists were one of the most impor­tant pil­lars in this polit­i­cal process, which pro­duced the so-called “Iraqi National Assem­bly” that brought the crim­i­nal al-Jaafari Gov­ern­ment, and had at that time more than twenty MP’s and min­is­ters, and then par­tic­i­pate strongly in the 2005 elec­tions with the Shi­ite coali­tion and seized about thirty seats in the cur­rent par­lia­ment, and more than five min­is­te­r­ial seats in Maliki’s gov­ern­ment, who they brought to power, with this Muq­tada al-Sadr has gave the legit­i­macy and the exis­tence rea­son for the Amer­i­can occupation.

- The “Mahdi Army” mili­tia started the civil war in the coun­try and was one of the mos thet impor­tant par­tic­i­pants, they fired their evil arms on the Iraqi peo­ple, demol­ished mosques, the dis­place­ment of hun­dreds of fam­i­lies from their homes, the killing of hun­dreds of inno­cent peo­ple, and the killings on iden­tity, this mili­tia destroyed the fab­ric of the Iraqi soci­ety by sec­tar­ian iso­late of neigh­bor­hoods in an attempt to con­trol Bagh­dad trans­form it into sec­tar­ian cantons.

- The “Mahdi Army” mili­tia did not took up the arms against the Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion except in rare cases when the occu­pier harassed their activ­i­ties of blood­shed of the inno­cents, al-Sadr’s mili­tia was an obsta­cle faced by the Iraqi resis­tance, the mili­tia tar­geted the Mujahdeen incu­ba­tors with a sec­tar­ian eth­nic attacks across Bagh­dad and geo­graph­i­cal sur­round­ings, which caused an addi­tional bur­den on the heroes of the Iraqi resis­tance by fac­ing groups of the Sadrists mur­ders and crim­i­nals who were employed on behalf of the occupiers.

- The cur­rent con­flict between Muq­tada and his fol­low­ers on one hand and Maliki and the rest of the Shi­ite Alliance on the other hand is a bat­tle for influ­ence and power, oil and money in the cen­ter and south areas, is not directed against the occu­piers in any case, this con­flict has started after the approval of the provin­cial law and start of the count­down for its elec­tions, groups and fac­tional ambi­tions of both sides, there­fore mar­ket­ing the cur­rent cri­sis as “the bat­tle of resis­tance against the occu­pa­tion” is pure hypocrisy and false­hood, those who are using this rea­son seek to break their iso­la­tion and win the Iraqi street, the Arab and Islamic sym­pa­thy and cover the for­mer and recent crimes against Iraq and its people.

The Iraqi resis­tance dis­as­so­ci­ates itself from this impos­tor who wants to fish in a trou­bled water look­ing for gains .… a cheap and bla­tant attempt to hijack the resis­tance reputation…