But al-Da`wa left the INC in 1995, in part over disputes with the Kurds, who wanted to see Iraq transformed into a loose federation, whereas al-Da`wa favored a strong central state. The Kurds in turn fell into a bitter civil war around the same time, and the INC was torn apart by infighting. The CIA and the State Department gradually distanced themselves from it, because of unaccounted-for monies, though the INC and Chalabi remained in the good graces of Paul Wolfowitz and other American neoconservatives. The INC's fortunes improved when the hawks took back the Defense Department in 2001. In the aftermath of September 11 Chalabi managed to put back together a coalition of SCIRI, the Kurdish groups, and others, though al-Da`wa generally kept its distance.

In the meantime, inside Iraq, Saddam's government appeared determined to wipe out Iraqi Shiism. It tried to draw Shiites away to secular Baathism and launched cruel attacks on recalcitrant villages in the south. Some 500,000 marsh Arabs of the Madan tribes—fishermen, farmers and smugglers—employed their swamps to hide from the Baathist troops and to conduct hit-and-run guerrilla operations against them. They were organized by the Iraqi Hezbollah, or Party of God, and received some Iranian help. They also sometimes coordinated with SCIRI's Badr Corps, which infiltrated the swamps from Iran. In response Baath engineers built dams and irrigation works that drained the swamps. By the early 21st century only 10 percent of the swamps survived; the rest had turned to dust. The marsh Arabs were scattered, some to nearby villages and towns as dirt-poor laborers, others to exile in Iran.

Many Shiites with a village-tribal background had also settled in East Baghdad's al-Thawrah township, which had been founded by military dictator al-Qasim in 1962. Dwelling in grinding poverty and largely deprived of the benefits of Iraq's petroleum bonanza, they often rioted against the Baath, with particular force in 1977 and 1991. In each case they met vicious repression. By the 1990s their population had swelled to some two million, nearly 10 percent of the country. They retained some tribal ties and organization in their new urban environment and began turning away from folk Shiism to a more scholastic urban religious outlook.

In scholastic Shiism each believer must choose a prominent clergyman and follow his rulings on the minutiae of religious law, such as "Since perfume has alcohol in it, and alcohol is forbidden, may a Shiite wear perfume?" The most popular and authoritative such clergyman, or Object of Emulation, had usually been the foremost scholar in the shrine and seminary city of Najaf. In the 1960s it was Muhsin al-Hakim, and then the torch passed to Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei.

After al-Khoei's death in 1992, however, a generation gap developed. Older Shiites tended to follow al-Khoei's disciple, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who was originally from Iran. A quietist, he rejected involvement in politics and rejected Khomeini's theory of clerical rule. The new generation, however, was attracted to a younger, activist scholar named Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. A cousin of the martyred theorist of Islamic government in Iraq, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Sadiq emerged as a political organizer of some genius. He established networks of believers loyal to him in Basra, East Baghdad, Kufa, and the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala. Although he did not have Sistani's seniority, he also lacked the elder man's timidity. In the 1990s Sadr II, as he became known, repeatedly defied Saddam.

Saddam had attempted to outlaw Friday prayers among the Shiites. Sadr II insisted on leading them, and established a network of mosques in the slums of East Baghdad where congregants furtively gathered on Friday afternoons. Sadr II compared Saddam to a tyrannical medieval caliph who persecuted the Shiites of his day. He organized informal Shiite religious courts throughout the country and tried to convince tribal Shiites to come under the sway of formal jurisprudence. He denounced women, including Christians, who dared go out unveiled. He lambasted his followers if they wore clothing with Western labels. He preached against Israel. He accepted Khomeini's theory of the rule of the jurisprudent, and may have had his eye on the position for himself in Iraq.

Sadr II gained some two million followers for his militant, Khomeini-style Shiism. Then, after warning him to fall silent, Saddam's secret police assassinated him and two of his sons in February of 1999. The South erupted in riots, which were, predictably, put down by the jackboot.

The Shiites Under Occupation {mosgoogle right}

Sadr II's young son, Muqtada al-Sadr, was heir to a family tradition of martyrdom. Married to the orphaned daughter of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr (Sadr I), he went underground in Kufa and East Baghdad, continuing his father's networking and organizing among young Shiite slum dwellers. The American invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003 proved to be a windfall for him. Even before the Baath fell on April 9, his followers had expelled the party from East Baghdad, which they renamed Sadr City. Muqtada's young clerical devotees reopened mosques and other Shiite institutions, established neighborhood militias, captured arms and ammunitions from Baath depots, took over hospitals, and asserted local authority in East Baghdad, Kufa, and some neighborhoods of Najaf, Karbala, and Basra. They engaged in crowd politics, calling for frequent demonstrations against the Anglo-American occupation in Baghdad, Basra, and Najaf, sometimes managing to get out crowds of 5,000 to 10,000.

In the meantime, the al-Da`wa Party reemerged in Nasiriya, Basra, and elsewhere, though not nearly on the scale of the Sadr II bloc. The London-based branch of al-Da`wa, which had been willing to cooperate with the Americans, emerged as the most prominent, hooking back up with cell members in Nasiriya and Basra. Many figures associated with the Iranian branch remained in Tehran, unwilling to return to an Iraq under American dominance. The attempt of the heir to the al-Khoei name, Abd al-Majid al-Khoei, to come back and assert authority in Najaf (probably with U.S. backing) failed when he was cut down by a Sadrist mob in April. SCIRI leaders returned to Iraq in April and May, and their Badr Corps fighters slipped back into the country from Iran, establishing themselves in eastern cities, such as Baquba and Kut, near the Iranian border. They failed to get much purchase in East Baghdad or other Sadrist areas, however. Although SCIRI proved willing to work with the Americans, the Badr Corps often clashed with U.S. troops in Baquba and elsewhere.

Both the Sadr II bloc and SCIRI sought a clerically dominated Islamic republic in Iraq, though with different announced strategies. Muqtada was plain-spoken about the goal and refused to cooperate with the United States in attaining it. SCIRI, in contrast, thought in terms of a two-step process. Badr Corps commander Abdul Aziz al-Hakim articulated the process in a television interview, saying that Iraqis would first choose a pluralistic government, but in the long term the Shiite majority would opt for an Islamic republic. This plan resembled the machinations of Communist parties in the early 20th century who collaborated with the national bourgeoisie to establish postcolonial states but aimed for ultimate Communist dictatorship.