After the civil war, the Badr Brigade turned into a political force on its own and left ISCI, although the two continue to be part of a coalition in Iraq's parliament.SCIRI was the umbrella body for two Iran-based Shia Islamist groups, Dawa and the Islamic Action Organisation led by Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi.Iranian officials referred to Hakim as the leader of Iraq's future Islamic state ..."[8] However, there are crucial ideological differences between SCIRI and al-Dawa.It gained popularity among Shia Iraqis by providing social services and humanitarian aid, following the pattern of Islamic organizations in other countries such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.In 2006 the United Nations human rights chief in Iraq, John Pace, said that every month hundreds of Iraqis were being tortured to death or executed by the Interior Ministry under SCIRI's control.Another is the Mehdi Army of the young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who is part of the Shia coalition seeking to form a government after winning the mid-December election."[17] Ideologically SIIC differs from Muqtada al-Sadr and its sometime ally Islamic Dawa Party, in favoring a decentralized Iraq state with an autonomous Shia zone in the south.[19][20][21] In a BBC interview in London, Ghazi al-Yawar the Sunni Arab sheik, cited reports that Iran sent close to a million people to Iraq and covertly supplied Shia religious groups with money to help compete in the elections.
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, casts his ballot at a poll station in Baghdad in the January, 2005 election.