By Ellen Ratner.com
Saddam is dead; Moktada al-Sadr is alive. The two men are, to use an expression I heard from a student at the University of Damascus, ''two sides of the same coin.'' In all the coverage of the Saddam execution, I was most struck by this account in Sunday's New York Times:

The room was quiet as everyone began to pray, including Mr. Hussein. ''Peace be upon Muhammed and his holy family.'' Two guards added, ''Supporting his son Moktada, Moktada, Moktada.'' Mr. Hussein seemed a bit stunned, swimming his head in their direction. They were talking about Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric whose militia is now committing some of the worst violence in the sectarian fighting; he is the son of a revered Shiite cleric Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, whom many believe Mr. Hussein ordered murdered. The U.S. invasion of Iraq has shifted power from the Sunnis to the Shiites. Most Americans likely don't know, or care about the difference between the two. This is unfortunate, as it may ultimately be the undoing of American influence, however tenuous it may be, in the oil rich region of our globe. I am no Islamic scholar, but I can briefly sum up one important difference between the two. The Shiites believe their leadership must come directly from Muhammed's bloodline. The Sunni endorse the leadership of Muhammed's successors. Iran's population is predominantly Shiite and Saudi Arabia's is Sunni. The Shiites also believe in the ''Mahdi,'' the rightly guided one, whose role, according to the History News Network, is ''to bring a just global caliphate into being.'' Oddly enough, Moktada al-Sadr is a Shiite cleric who happened to name his militia the ''Mahdi Army.'' He professes himself to be the rightful leader of his people. I call him the ''Come Back Kid.'' He went from being ''most-wanted,'' as in dead or alive, by coalition forces, to ''most appeased,'' by Iraq's prime minister. J. Paul Bremer, the first president of post-Saddam Iraq, attempted to shut down al-Sadr's newspaper, arrest him for inciting violence and charge him with the murder of another cleric back in the summer of 2004. There was the famous showdown at the Holy Shrine of Najaf between al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the U.S. Marines. This is a telling account from Time magazine's Aug. 15, 2004 report on the battle for Najaf: For eight days, the warnings of a decisive military showdown echoed across Najaf as fighting raged between U.S. forces and Shi'ite militiamen for control of the holy city. The Shi'ites' truculent leader, cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, vowed not to leave his bunker in the sect's sacred Imam Ali shrine "until the last drop of my blood has been spilled." The U.S. Marine colonel commanding American and Iraqi-government troops battling the stubborn gunmen of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army proclaimed his men were ready "to finish this fight that the Muqtada militia started." Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister of Iraq's U.S.-backed interim government, declared there would be "no negotiation or truce" with the Shi'ite rebels. As the battle unfolded amid the dusty vastness of the city's Valley of Peace cemetery adjacent to the shrine and U.S. Marines engaged in a tomb-to-tomb fight with black-clad Mahdi fighters, all the elements of Armageddon seemed to be converging on the place. And then on the ninth day, everyone drew back. .In Baghdad, authorities wavered between efforts to keep him at arm's length and attempts to invite him into the political process. The Bush Administration regards him as a thug and refuses to engage with someone it sees as a carbon copy of Iran's ruling mullahs. Nor do Western officials in Baghdad trust his tactics. "We've been watching him take over the city of Najaf bit by bit by bit," says an official. "That experience has given us cause to question his credibility when he makes promises and to wonder whether he is prepared to play in a political process marked by votes." Times have changed. The only votes that matter are the ones al-Sadr delivered for the Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki in order to put him into power. Now, while Iraq's so-called ''national unity'' government is made up of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, the government is beholden to the Shiites and to al-Sadr in particular. Try as he may, Malaki just can't seem to root out those who play Iraqi cop by day and Shiite death squad by night. Saddam's execution is another example of how the Shiites are bypassing the tenuous Iraqi ''rule of law.'' Saddam's fate was to be decided by a three-judge panel made up of a Shiite, Sunni and Kurd. Instead, al-Maliki fast-tracked him to the gallows. My prediction for 2007 is that Malaki will continue to be a figurehead of state. He is now a puppet of al-Sadr, not the United States. Saddam's death has given birth to a new leader. The Caliph ruled Baghdad until 1258. The Caliph is back.