Pat Dollard | Young Americans

By Stephen Farrell and Suadad al-Salhy - (Herald Trib)

ABU DISHIR: Moktada al-Sadr, the Iraqi Shiite cleric, on Friday called on his followers to sign in blood a pledge of loyalty to the Shiite saint after whom he named the Mahdi army, and to affirm their commitment to ridding Iraq of U.S. troops.

The blood pledge was announced during Friday prayers at cities across Iraq, where a document of homage including a color photocopy of Sadr’s red fingerprint was circulated by his supporters.

The pledge request also called on all Muslim believers “to work to liberate all the Islamic states in general, and Iraq especially, from the armies of darkness, by which I mean the occupation and colonization.”

Sadr recently announced that he would be dividing his movement into the Mahdi army and Momahidoun, an unarmed cultural and religious movement whose name means “those who pave the way.”

That division was raised in the carefully-worded document released Friday, in which Sadr asked his followers to take part “either in jihad and military resistance or in jihad and cultural resistance.”

Only a few hundred people turned up Friday at Sadrist offices in Sadr City and Najaf to sign the covenant, as millions of Shiites were already heading by foot, car and minibus to the Shiite holy city of Karbala to celebrate the birthday of Muhammad al-Mahdi, a ninth-century saint and the last of 12 imams revered by Shiites.

The celebration of Mahdi’s birthday is a sensitive time for Sadrists. It was during this holiday last year that Sadr’s forces fought a turf war on the streets of Karbala, amid millions of Shiite pilgrims, drawing widespread criticism from the Shiite community and forcing them days later to declare a cease-fire.

Pilgrims again headed to Karbala in huge numbers this year, facing a different sort of violence. A roadside bomb struck a minibus packed with pilgrims on Friday, even as the Iraqi authorities deployed over 40,000 police officers and soldiers to avert new violence in the annual rite, The Associated Press reported.

The director of the hospital in Balad, where the bomb exploded, and the local police said that four people were killed and 40 others were wounded in the blast. The U.S. military in northern Iraq said initial reports indicate 30 to 35 Iraqis were wounded, The AP said.

The attack came one day after a female suicide bomber killed at least 18 people and wounded 78 at a tent filled with women worshipers.

As tens of thousands of pilgrims marched and drove down the main highway from Baghdad to Karbala on Friday, even devoted followers of Sadr freely conceded that his movement had in the past been damaged by “extremists” and “illegal persons who attacked people.”

“That is why he froze the activities of the Mahdi army,” said Abdul Rahman Hamed Hussein, a Sadr supporter who was providing water and soft drinks to thirsty pilgrims.

The announcement by Sadr was dismissed by his political opponents as a sign of weakness. “It’s just like the previous announcements,” said a close aide of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

“One time he talks about peaceful resistance, and another time he says let’s bring the weapons. This recent announcement is just an empty one. The Moktada al-Sadr issue is finished.”

But Ibrahim al-Sumaidaie, a political analyst, said he believed Sadr was using the announcement as a sort of census ahead of forthcoming elections, “to calculate his supporters on the ground.”

Separately, the U.S. military said Friday that Iraqi security forces would take over checkpoints near the Iranian border that had been manned previously by Georgian troops. Georgian forces left Iraq following the outbreak of fighting with Russian forces last week.