Muqtada al-Sadr personally put an end to the spook. On Tuesday, the Shiite preacher appeared in the southern Iraqi scholarly city of Najaf and called on his followers to withdraw from the government district of Baghdad within an hour. A little later, eyewitnesses and security authorities reported that the withdrawal had begun and the curfew was lifted. Within a few hours on Monday, Sadr had thrown the “Green Zone”, actually the safest place in the Iraqi capital, into chaos and fueled concerns that Iraq could be heading for a new civil war. He had “finally” withdrawn from politics in an announcement on Twitter. Shortly thereafter, hundreds of his supporters stormed the government district.
It did not stop with the images, however, showing Sadrists triumphantly bathing in the pools of the palaces. Militiamen from his “peace brigades” were also quickly on the spot. In the end, the scenes of armed clashes with the security forces and mutual shelling dominated, in which not only assault rifles and machine guns or rocket-propelled grenades were used, but also mortar shells and rockets – and numerous mobile phones that took pictures of them. Dozens of dead were reported, Western embassies cleared, Iran closed its border with the neighboring country, the UN warned that the state’s survival was at stake.
