Word: hakim
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Remember this name: Amar Al-Hakim. He is 36 years old, the heir apparent to one of Iraq's two leading Shi'ite dynasties, and a few weeks ago in Ramadi, he did something quite remarkable. He went to meet and make peace with the more than 100 Sunni sheiks who led the movement to kick al-Qaeda in Iraq out of Anbar province. He was accompanied by the leader of his family's militia, the Badr Organization, which was lethally anti-Sunni until recently. The Hakim delegation was ferried to the meeting in Black Hawk helicopters...
...catch: there is a missing player in all this hugging and goat eating. He is Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army militia and, quite possibly, the most popular Shi'ite political figure in the country. Al-Sadr is less accessible, a fuzzier figure than al-Hakim. The U.S. intelligence community has only a vague sense of how much control he has over his disparate movement, which includes everything from Iranian-trained guerrillas, referred to as "special groups," to ragtag teenage criminal street gangs who claim the Mahdi mantle. He has been spending a lot of time...
Besides Sadr's Jaish al Mahdi and Hakim's Badr Corps, a new group has recently surfaced in the city called the Brigade of Hussein, named after the 7th Century Shi'ite martyr Imam Hussein, the central figure of Shi'a Islam. The group claimed responsibility for the recent attack on the Polish ambassador in Baghdad, a coordinated ambush that included a series of timed explosions and pre-planned gunfire that wounded the ambassador and killed one of his security guards. In Diwaniyah, locals say these armed groups may focus their attention on the local Polish base in the city...
Although the two groups recently pledged to work together in an accord signed by Sadr and SIIC leader Abdul Aziz al Hakim two weeks ago in Iran, the power grab plays out daily on the streets of southern cities such as Diwaniyah. "What's happening in this town is like a political duel over who's going to govern," said Ali al Mayali, a Sadrist member of the Iraqi Parliament. "It's a fight to control the street." Fueling that fight, Mayali said, is money and other support from neighboring countries. He would not point fingers. While U.S. officials point...
Last weekend Sadr and the leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, announced a truce. In a statement aired with much publicity, the two leaders pledged to cease violence. Whether the pact holds remains to be seen, especially in Basra. Tensions between the two factions there have lately been especially high following the British pullout to the airport outside the city. Regardless, U.S. forces are unlikely to play a meaningful role in shaping the outcome. With no evident plans to reenter southern areas, the U.S.-led coalition leaves the fate of some of Iraq's most...