Controversial Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Tuesday announced that he was dissolving the “blue caps,” an organized unit of his supporters accused of deadly attacks on anti-government protests.
Al-Sadr, who has a cult-like following of several million Iraqis, initially backed the rallies demanding a government overhaul when they erupted in October last year, but has switched course multiple times in the past few weeks, finally breaking with the movement by endorsing Iraqi prime minister-designate Mohammad Allawi.
A two-time former communications minister, Allawi is seen by protesters as too close to the elite they have railed against for months.
Since then, al-Sadr supporters wearing blue caps have raided protest sites in Baghdad and the Shiite-majority south, leaving eight protesters dead.
Facing growing criticism, al-Sadr took to Twitter on Tuesday.
“I announce the dissolution of the ‘blue caps,’ and I do not accept the [Sadrist] movement’s presence in and of itself at the protests, unless it is absorbed into them,” he tweeted.
Initially, al-Sadr supporters were seen as the most organized and well-provisioned of the demonstrators, but his tweets have confused followers and foes.
After backing Allawi, he ordered the “blue caps” to help security forces reopen schools, roads and public offices closed for months by protests.
They stormed anti-Allawi protests camps, leaving one protester stabbed to death in Hilla and seven gunned down in the shrine city of Najaf.
Feeling betrayed and outraged, activists began openly criticizing al-Sadr in their chants.
The country’s top Shiite religious authority Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani condemned the violence and insisted state security forces take the lead in restoring order.
Already, protest-related violence has killed nearly 550 people, the vast majority of them demonstrators, the Iraqi Human Rights Commission has said.
Yet demonstrators have maintained their campaign, now focused on Allawi, who was nominated on Feb. 1.
Allawi has until March 2 to form his Cabinet, which would need a vote of confidence from parliament.
That government would be expected to rule only until early parliamentary elections are held under a new electoral law — a major demand of demonstrators.
Al-Sadr had first welcomed Allawi’s nomination as a “good step,” but appeared to walk back his support on Tuesday.
“We hear that there are pressures from political parties and from sects over the forming of the temporary government,” al-Sadr tweeted. “This could lead us to completely wash our hands of all of it.”
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