Word: iraq
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Formed in 1979 as Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's personal militia, the IRGC acquired a reputation for suicidal human-wave attacks in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. After Khomeini's death in 1989, the government of then President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani sought to channel the guards' fervor into reconstruction projects, allowing them to dip into the coffers of massive religious and charitable foundations known as bonyads; in time, the guards came to control the foundations themselves...
...formidable organization. Its predominant partners are the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq - the largest Shi'ite political party now led by Ammar al-Hakim, the son of the recently departed and revered cleric Abdulaziz al-Hakim - and the militant Moqtada al-Sadr's party, which has its pulse on the much of the country's poor and frustrated Shi'a underclass. (Read how the shoe-thrower put Maliki in a sensitive spot...
...wanted his Dawa Party to receive a majority of the block's parliament seats and to be guaranteed a return to the premiership. No deal. So Maliki decided to gamble on his own prowess, forming a new coalition he touts as nationalist (condemning alleged Syrian support for terrorism in Iraq and promoting a strong central government) as well as anti-sectarian (digs at the INA, which is led by clerics with strong ties to neighboring Iran...
...coming months, Iraq's contending coalitions will expand and contract. Many smaller parties and candidates will decide whether one of the coalitions is right for them. Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's Iraqyia list, for example, has been holding talks with the INA but is undecided. Most importantly, the Kurdistan Alliance will be carefully courted as potential kingmaker when the votes are cast and a new government is formed. Iraq's Kurds put forward a mostly united front in their rocky relations with the central government in Baghdad over autonomy, oil sharing, and disputed territories, issues that pit it against...
...pictures of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on LIFE.com...