Word: baghdads
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...talk indeed. Sadr's visit to Turkey a week ago, his first public appearance in nearly two years, has renewed talk in Baghdad about what his plans might be in the months and years ahead. "I think Sadr picked Turkey to show himself in order to prove that he's against sectarianism... and to try and kill the rumor that he is an Iranian toy," says Tahseen al-Shekhli, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, which gained the upper hand over Sadr's Mahdi Army forces in heavy fighting last year. Sadr's followers, for their part, are notably reticent...
...truth is that no one really understands Sadr's thinking and doings aside from the cleric himself and presumably his innermost circle of followers. The most common assumption in Baghdad about Sadr is that his long absence from sight means that he has been undergoing intensive religious instruction in Qom, Iran, the leading center for Shi'ite Islamic scholars. Through his studies in Qom, Sadr could rise from a cleric to the rank of ayatollah, giving him the authority to issue edicts taken as law by many Shi'ites. With that power, Sadr could eventually position himself to replace Iraq...
...loyalty he has cultivated in the security and intelligence services. But his electoral power base remains rooted in the Shi'ite majority, and he has largely declined to implement the U.S. benchmarks for national reconciliation deemed essential for ending the civil war by strengthening the Sunni political stake in Baghdad. The oil law governing distribution of revenues has not been passed, nor have restrictions been significantly eased on former members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist organization (the party remains popular among Sunnis) serving in government. Most alarming, perhaps, has been Maliki's departure from the U.S. strategy of putting...
...bodies were found beneath a construction site in the eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Ur, just at the edge of Sadr City. The victims were blindfolded with tape across their mouths and may have been buried alive, according to Iraqi authorities who uncovered the grave in November. The corpses had lain there since at least...
Since then, Iraq has done little to encourage accountability for alleged human-rights abuses by Iraqi security forces working with Shi'ite militias at the height of the sectarian killings. General David Petraeus, the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, and former Baghdad Ambassador Ryan Crocker repeatedly quarreled with al-Maliki on the matter throughout 2008, pressing the Prime Minister to clear the way for the trial of at least one senior Ministry of Interior official accused of orchestrating prison abuses and murders. Al-Maliki resisted the U.S. pressure and largely seemed unconcerned about investigating a myriad of cases...