The Rebellion in Iraq Continues

The Western mainstream media has been so captive of the anti-Iranian narrative regarding the month-plus protests in Iraq that it is hard to find any news about the protesters' formidable Iraqi advocates, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr. Reuters reports today in "Iraqi forces kill three protesters, cleric warns of crisis" that 

Iraq’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on Friday for politicians to hurry up in reforming electoral laws because the changes would be the only way to resolve weeks of deadly unrest.

“We affirm the importance of speeding up the passing of the electoral law and the electoral commission law because this represents the country moving past the big crisis,” his representative said during a sermon in the holy city of Kerbala.

Sistani, who rarely weighs in on politics except in times of crisis, holds massive influence over public opinion in Shi’ite-majority Iraq. He also repeated his view that the protesters had legitimate demands and should not be met with violence.

Alissa Rubin had an excellent story the other day (see "‘Our Patience Is Over’: Why Iraqis Are Protesting") about Sadr City's important role in the Baghdad protests. She mentions that

Most Sadr City residents, like many people in southern Iraq, are followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, a nationalist and populist Shiite cleric and leader whose family long resisted the authority of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

[snip] 

Sadr City today remains armed and ready to defend its own.

The Sadr Organization, of which Abu Tiba is a member, and which has ties to Mr. al-Sadr’s militia, is helping to coordinate the protests from the neighborhood. Its members are thick on the ground at the protests, controlling strategic positions.

 At the outset of the protests, in the beginning of October, al-Sadr and al-Sistani were regularly mentioned as being on the side of the protesters. Then this fact largely disappeared from the coverage. If you were pro-Iranian, the protests were dismissed as another Western plot; if you were pro-American, an anti-Iranian rebellion. But in reality it is a real people-power uprising, a promising reemergence of the Arab Spring.