Word: allawi
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...today. Even if the battle for control of the mosque ends in al-Sadr's retreat, the struggle for control of the country is far from over. Resolution of the standoff in Najaf may help boost the legitimacy of the interim U.S.-backed government and its Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, among Iraqis fed up with al-Sadr's truculence. And yet the renegade cleric still commands thousands of fervent followers willing to take up arms anytime at his order, and his strident defiance of the U.S. has won him an even greater number of noncombat supporters. Even an inconclusive truce...
...across Iraq that shows few signs of abating. U.S. commanders say they have inflicted punishing blows to al-Sadr's army; the military claims that hundreds of the cleric's fighters have been killed in the fighting in Najaf. But the fear of alienating peaceful Shi'ites forced the Allawi government to hold back from its threats to launch a decisive strike against rebels inside the shrine. And so late last week, even as al-Sadr claimed to be handing over the site to officials loyal to Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, al-Sadr's shock troops remained armed...
Since the beginning of the battle with al-Sadr early this month, the Allawi government, backed by the U.S., made clear its determination to prevent Najaf, an ancient city sacred to the country's majority Shi'ites, from becoming a Fallujah-style sanctuary for militants. The Prime Minister may also have chosen to strike at the Mahdi Army in hopes of sending a strong signal to other rebels: Look what happens when you go up against this government. Allawi, widely regarded among Iraqis as little more than a puppet of the U.S., needed to come...
...trial of strength didn't turn out to be easy at all. A tactical victory at the shrine would rouse wholesale Shi'ite resistance to his government. A decision to back down would destroy Allawi's ability to impose order on insurgents across the country. At the Pentagon, officials were keen to be done with al-Sadr once and for all but acknowledged it would take an unacceptable level of force to do the job. They insisted that they were not calling the shots: any decision to storm the mosque would be Allawi's. The Prime Minister declared that...
...Allawi had lost patience with all the tense back and forth. He issued a "final call" for al-Sadr to leave the shrine compound and disband his militia. And for hours that night, U.S. planes dropped bombs, gunships strafed rebel positions near the shrine, and tanks shelled militia hideaways as explosions filled the sky over the Old City with billowing smoke and a deadly orange glow. U.S. military commanders said they were merely "shaping the battlefield" in case a frontal assault was ordered. But al-Sadr is adept at divining when to back down. On Friday he promised to "turn...