Word: mahdi
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...Iraqis know that this may not be enough to protect them. In the days following Omar Farooq's harrowing experience, his family quickly acquired fake IDs for all its children. Seeking police protection was never an option - many of the cops in the neighborhood are former members of the Mahdi Army, the violent Shi'ite militia loyal to the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The family didn't feel it could turn to Shi'ite neighbors for support, either. Since the Feb. 22 bombing of the Shi'ite mosque in Samarra, relations between Shi'ites and Sunnis in mixed neighborhoods...
...element of strategic calculation behind the public remarks of U.S. officials, there was genuine emotion too. In private meetings with Abeer's relatives, military officers apologized repeatedly, and a one-star general hugged her two orphaned brothers. "The general seemed emotionally distressed. He was not pretending," concluded Mahdi Obeid Saleh, Abeer's cousin, who says he rushed to the crime scene and doused the flames on her burning body. Both Saleh and Army investigators initially thought the attack was the work of insurgents. "This is what happens when you harbor terrorists," a military translator lectured Saleh...
...ails Iraq. The political deadlock has been based not on personality issues, but on the balance of power both within the Shi'ite camp and between the Shi'ites and other factions. If the Shi'ite bloc drops him, it's unlikely to choose the U.S.-favored Abdul Adel Mahdi as his replacement. Not only is there resentment created by U.S. intervention in the political process, but Adel-Mahdi is the candidate of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the arch-rival of Jaafari's major backer, the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr. More likely...
...Britain hope that the man chosen will be current deputy president Adel Abdul-Mahdi of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), who was edged out by a single vote in the Shi'ite bloc's internal ballot that nominated Jaafari. But if Jaafari's backers don't get to have their man, there are reasons to expect that Abdul-Mahdi's won't gets theirs, either...
...First, there's growing resentment among Shi'ite leaders at the perceived Western "meddling" in Iraq's politics, which may make the recent feting of Abdul Mahdi by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw during their Baghdad visit something of a kiss of death. More importantly, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to whom the Shi'ite bloc turned for guidance on resolving the standoff, has insisted that it resolve the issue both speedily and unanimously. That demand will likely translate into a compromise candidate, and Abdul-Mahdi doesn't necessarily fit that bill: not only...