Word: clerics
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...future of the cease-fire observed by his Medhi Army, Iraq waited on tenterhooks for the message to be read at Friday prayers. "I'm extending the freeze of army activity," al-Sadr's statement read, ordering his militia to remain standing down until mid-August, when presumably the cleric will reconsider. Despite pressure from within his movement's ranks to end the cease-fire that, they complain, has been used by U.S. forces and al-Sadr's Shi'ite rivals to go after the organization, Friday's message hardly mentioned his many enemies in Iraq...
Senior U.S. officials in Baghdad don't seem too worried that the six-month deadline Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr set for his militia's unilateral cease-fire is about to lapse. "There has been some communication back and forth that appears to indicate that it will continue," said Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. U.S. officials say the cease-fire was a major factor in lowering violence across Iraq, where an ongoing surge of U.S. forces is now focused primarily on fighting Sunni extremists. "I would say it probably caused us about...
...about Mughniyah and his alleged exploits from the 1980s. Sheikh Sobhi Tufayli, a founder of Hizballah who led the organization between 1989 and 1991, once told me that Mughniyah was innocent of the charges leveled against him by the U.S. "He had nothing to do with it," the gruff cleric said, then added "Besides do you think I would tell...
...study, but Sadr, say aides, wants to complete it within two years. In that time, he'll receive the religious equivalent of a mail-order diploma. "No Shi'ite Iraqi really believes he is going to study or that he could complete his studies to become a respectable cleric in a year," says Nasr, "but he can do enough to get the political cover he needs...
...scene that should have U.S. officials worried. Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who closely follows developments in Iraq, calls Sadr's decision to rein in his forces a "pretty huge" part of the recent progress. But he isn't convinced that the young cleric has graciously taken himself out of the game without a long-term strategic agenda in mind. O'Hanlon doesn't see Sadr as a weaker player, "but a person who is deciding if he wants to play politics or go back to the battlefield," says O'Hanlon. "I wish I could...