Word: dari
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...police and army units there." The success in Anbar has led sheiks in at least two other Sunni-dominated provinces, Nineveh and Salahaddin, to ask for similar alliances against the foreign fighters. And, as TIME's Bobby Ghosh has reported, an influential leader of the Sunni insurgency, Harith al-Dari, has turned against al-Qaeda as well. It is possible that al-Qaeda is being rejected like a mismatched liver transplant by the body of the Iraqi insurgency...
...squads in exchange for use of the neighborhoods to launch suicide bombings against Shi'ite civilians. But over the past few months, al-Qaeda has been losing support among powerful leaders in the Sunni community. In an exclusive interview with TIME's Bobby Ghosh on May 12, Harith al-Dari, Iraq's most influential Sunni cleric and a vocal critic of the U.S., said al-Qaeda has "gone too far." He rejects al-Qaeda's vision of a fundamentalist state, saying, "Iraqis will not accept such a system." At the same time, he said, "Sunnis don't know...
...senior cleric's attitude toward al-Qaeda has changed, al-Dari says he has not softened his view of the U.S. presence in Iraq. "The occupation cannot continue," he says. "As long as the Americans are in Iraq, there will be violence." Like other Sunni leaders - and some Shi'ite ones - he wants the Bush Administration to set a timetable for a withdrawal...
...Dari also remains inflexible in his hatred of the al-Maliki government, which he accuses of "serving foreign masters" - a reference to the close ties of leading Shi'ite politicians to Iran. The loathing is mutual. Top government leaders, from President Jalal Talabani on down, have described al-Dari as an inciter of ethnic and sectarian violence. Last November, the Interior Ministry issued a warrant for his arrest. Ever since, he has divided his time between several Arab states, monitoring al-Maliki's actions from afar. Not even the Prime Minister's recent decision to allow many former Baath Party...
...Like many other Sunni leaders, al-Dari says al-Maliki's efforts at sectarian reconciliation have been empty promises. "All he does is say, 'Come and join us,' " he says. "But he doesn't change any of the things that make us feel we are being victimized by his administration." For there to be any meaningful reconciliation, he says, the government must first dismantle the interior and defense ministries, which are currently controlled by Shi'ite parties, and bring back some senior officers from the old army. "Once these ministries are under the control of professionals instead of sectarian interests...