Word: ites
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...adapt his political persona to the prevailing circumstances. During his 24-year exile from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, he dropped his given name and went by "Jawad," to avoid detection by the dictator's spies. Returning to Baghdad in 2003, Maliki seemed no different from the legion of Shi'ite partisans who took up posts in the U.S.-installed interim government. He brought vigor and venom to his job on the committee responsible for purging the government of Saddam's mainly Sunni elite. He also spoke of reordering Iraq according to the fundamental principles of the Koran. In a couple...
Until then, most Iraqis had never heard of him, and didn't know what to expect from this phlegmatic figure in ill-fitting suits. Maliki didn't help matters by constantly shifting his position on key issues. One moment he supported the radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr; the next, he was ordering Iraqi forces to smash Sadr's militia. One minute he was being described by President Bush as "my man"; the next, he was fulminating against U.S. interference in Iraqi politics. "It's like every six months there's a new Maliki," says a Western official...
...three years into his premiership, the real Nouri al-Maliki may finally be revealing himself. Emboldened by his popular campaign against the Shi'ite militias, and by the U.S. military's success in turning the Sunni insurgency against al-Qaeda, Maliki has begun to project a persona instantly familiar to Iraqis, and to Arabs in general: the strongman. He has ordered the arrest of a number of prominent Sunnis, pushed aside rivals and undermined allies. In speeches, his language has grown increasingly belligerent, accusing those who disagree with his policies of working against Iraq. (See pictures of life returning...
...poll is questionable, but the results appear to be in step with popular sentiment toward the Sadrists in Baghdad, where many have come to see the cleric's followers as thugs and opportunists. "I am not satisfied with the ideology of these people," says Rasim Hassan Haikel, a Shi'ite shopkeeper in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Huriya, a longtime Mahdi Army stronghold...
...Baghdad A DEADLY CAMPAIGN As Iraq's Jan. 31 provincial elections near, violence against politicians has escalated. Hassan Zaidan al-Luhaibi, a Sunni leader and former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, was killed by a suicide bomber on Jan. 18, just two days after Shi'ite candidate Haitham Kadhim al-Husaini was fatally shot. The murders come as influential Shi'ite cleric Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani has urged Iraqis to vote despite dissatisfaction with previous elections...