Young Shia who have been brought up with nothing, who are pretty anarchic, pretty dangerous. In 2004 when they came close to killing me, and of course they have killed very large numbers of other Iraqis. That's a major source of strength for Muqtada.
Patrick CockburnYou know, if you want to meet a lot of Iraqi leaders, the best places are the hotels in Amman or in London. In general the government here is amazingly unpopular.
Patrick CockburnDespite the fact that there's billions of dollars sitting in the Iraqi government reserves, somehow they are incapable of getting it out to the people. There are a very large number of people here who are on the edge of starvation. For those sort of people - a sizable chunk of people - that service makes them regard Muqtada as a sort of god.
Patrick Cockburn