What is behind Al-Sadr misinterpreted statement?

Strange is that the media stressed on “fight the U.S. occu­pa­tion” part of Al-Sadr state­ment while they dropped out the main rea­son of the announcement.

Read­ing the Ara­bic ver­sion of Muqtada’s state­ment [see the trans­la­tion below], he didn’t said “new armed group to fight US forces”, he used: “a selec­tive group [from within Mahdi Army] to fight the U.S. occu­pa­tion” and this part was very brief and shad­owy, in the rest of the announce­ment he repeated “neu­tral­ize the Mahdi Army masses” many times. Pre­vents them from car­ry­ing arms against Iraqis or even against the occu­pa­tion, order­ing them to carry on the social and cul­tural work.

While this is the same tac­tics used by Hezbol­lah in Lebanon, Al-Sadr insisted on the secrecy among his “selec­tive group”, but there is a rea­son behind this “sur­prise” statement.

A week ago, two secret Badr Brigades doc­u­ments leaked and pub­lished by news­pa­pers, read the following:

First mes­sage:

Today, after we taught our first enemy in the Sadr Trend a bit­ter les­son and add to this the lost of pop­u­lar­ity of their leader Muq­tada Al-Sadr. We noticed that the pub­lic opin­ion of the Nawa­sib [Sun­nis] and Ba’athists sym­pa­thize with them.

There­fore, we give the instruc­tions to use the “Yel­low Phase” in all pro­ce­dures and direc­tions that you already know, to ensure that our enemy can never unite again.

Please, redi­rect to the “yel­low Cells” “Turath” imme­di­ately to take action a.s.a.p.

Sec­ond mes­sage:

To: Badr Organization

Sub­ject: confidential

We ask you to be alert in your move­ment from your res­i­dent places to our head­quar­ters, espe­cially our secret head­quar­ters of the “Yel­low Cells”.

After the arrest of the spy B. K. Jawad who is a mem­ber of one the hos­tile pow­ers of Al Sadr Trend, and after we ques­tioned him with the “Yel­low pro­ce­dures”. He revealed a plan to assas­si­nate our lead­ers and sym­bols to cre­ate havoc among our objec­tives which we are pro­gress­ing for thirty years.

Yel­low Phase and Yel­low Cells

Formed in 2006, secret Badr Brigades sleep­ing cells, first time acti­vated and used in April 2008. It’s main tasks are to infil­trate hos­tile Shi­ite par­ties, orga­ni­za­tions and the gov­ern­ment to assas­si­nate the peo­ple who are oppos­ing Badr Brigades, short name “Turath”. The period of these cells acti­va­tions called “Yel­low Phase”.

Muq­tada Al-Sadr knows that his inter­nal ene­mies are much more pow­er­ful than the U.S. forces, in his state­ment he wants to cre­ates a “fire­wall” from Badr and Maliki’s infil­tra­tion. this mes­sage had noth­ing to do with the Americans.

Al-Sadr state­ment

An appeal from the hum­ble Muq­tada Al Sadr to the loved one of Mahdi Army, appeal from a heart filled with love for you and all hon­or­able Iraqis who reject and resist the occu­pa­tion in all kinds of resis­tance. My appeal comes from a heart filled with wor­ries, eyes filled with tears and mourn­ful tired soul.

Every­one knows that we will not give up resist­ing the occu­piers until lib­er­a­tion or mar­tyr­dom but it must be clear and this is oblig­a­tory upon you mem­bers of Mahdi Army. The resis­tance will be exclu­sively on a selec­tive group that will be autho­rized by us soon, peo­ple of exper­tise and man­age­ment, aware­ness and sac­ri­fice of those who have first– prior autho­riza­tion from the legit­i­mate reli­gious leader ship and sec­ond– spe­cific per­mis­sion from their high com­mands, with spe­cial pro­ce­dures and total dis­creet. Their weapons directed against the occu­pier only, any other tar­gets are totally forbidden.

The sec­ond sec­tion of the army with it’s thou­sands or mil­lions, will form a ide­o­log­i­cal, reli­gious, cul­tural and social strug­gle against the west­ern thoughts, sec­u­lar­ism to lib­er­ates the minds and the hearts of hege­mony and glob­al­iza­tion, with it’s faith, aware­ness and to share expe­ri­ence. They will be pre­vented from carry or use arms.

The army will gen­er­ate sev­eral cul­tural points, far from the polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary strug­gle mak­ing every effort to apply it’s best, and will fol­low their lead­er­ship, who must in their turn acti­vate the cul­tural and intel­lec­tual spirit and encour­age the faith of sac­ri­fice. And you, my broth­ers in the Mahdi Army must obey them in these direc­tions and they do not have the right to issue any mil­i­tary orders.
He, who will object these two divi­sions, is not part of me [my Mahdi Army]. Stay away from polit­i­cal par­ties and pol­i­tics and stay away from hypocrisy. The best choice is to stay in the mid­dle, and with your behav­ior you can be a good exam­ple for the others.

Don’t attack any­body, not even with words. With this the rep­u­ta­tion of the ide­o­log­i­cal Army can stay clean, don’t do any­thing or say any­thing that can harm the resis­tance or the Army’s rep­u­ta­tion. Any per­son who inter­feres with the resis­tance work with­out expe­ri­ence or evi­dence is an enemy of the resis­tance.
I call on all par­ties to coop­er­ate with this deci­sion for the inter­est of Iraq and the Iraqis and away from any polit­i­cal or sec­u­lar desire. I am only a reformer and you are all brothers.