Word: hakim
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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What exactly can President Bush expect as a result of his White House meeting Monday with Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the Iraqi Shi'ite leader? The blunt answer: probably not much more than came out of his discussion last week with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. If the President is hoping al-Hakim will be any more favorably inclined toward U.S. interests than the Prime Minister is, Bush is in for frustrating time. A hardline Islamist, Al-Hakim has frequently given fiery anti-American speeches, denouncing U.S. policies in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel...
...seize the initiative, the White House announced a series of new diplomatic actions of its own, inviting Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of Iraq's leading Shi'ite party, and Tariq al-Hashemi, the Sunni Vice President, to Washington over the next few weeks as part of an effort to deepen connections to a greater variety of Iraqi political figures. And aides say Bush may call for what were already being dubbed "reciprocal obligations" with the Iraqi government: trading troop deployments for progress on sectarian violence, just as Baker and Hamilton are expected to propose. But there will...
...international jihad. Apart from the bombers already mentioned, there are, among others, Zacarias Moussaoui, the sole individual convicted of involvement in the 9/11 attacks; Ahmed Ressam, arrested at the Canadian border with explosives he had planned to use to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport; and Abdul Hakim Murad, convicted in Operation Bojinka, a 1995 al-Qaeda scheme to blow 12 planes, 11 of them U.S.-bound, out of the sky during a 48-hour period...
...same time as maintaining a private militia is unthinkable. The only country in the region with which they're familiar that has elections, a parliament, a president and so on, is Iran. And many of the institutions in Iran, since the revolution, have a dual character. So Hakim and Sadr think of their militias as analogous to Iran's Revolutionary Guards, which exist as a paramilitary institution separate from and not entirely integrated with the regular military - and which can be deployed and manipulated by various charismatic figures, as President Ahmedinajad has done to help get himself elected...
...Juan Cole: Iran has enormous influence over the Badr brigade, which was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and they could bring a lot of pressure to bear on Hakim, and Moqtada Sadr, to rein in the death squads. If Baker suggests talking to Iran, that would make a lot of sense. The U.S. interest in Iraq and Iran's interests in Iraq are actually congruent. The idea that Iran is being unhelpful or is somehow helping the Sunni insurgency has no basis in reality. Tehran does not want Iraq to break up: They're as worried as Turkey...