Word: moqtada
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Najaf, Kufa, Nasiriyah, Amara and Basra. Eight Americans and one allied soldier were killed in the fighting and 36 were wounded; the death toll among Iraqis was almost 50, with hundreds wounded. Fighting raged on Monday in Baghdad as U.S. troops clashed with militiamen loyal to the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The new uprising would not be tolerated and would be suppressed, warned U.S. viceroy J. Paul Bremer on Monday. Hours later, the Coalition announced an arrest warrant had been issued for Sadr. But the cleric had already told his supporters that the time for peaceful protest had passed...
...Shiite challenge is different from the Sunni insurgency. Instead of guerrillas attacking from the shadows and melting back into the civilian population, Moqtada al-Sadr has built a grassroots infrastructure for insurrection, with support structures in local mosques dotted around the country recruiting young men for his "Army of the Mahdi" militia. Following the arrest of one of his top aides on suspicion of involvement in the murder of a pro-U.S. cleric almost a year ago (the same incident for which Moqtada is now wanted) and the closure of his newspaper last week, the 30-year-old cleric...
...Sadr has long been the wild card factor facing the U.S. mission in Iraq. Neither the U.S. nor its Iraqi exile allies had reckoned with the strength of the underground organization the young radical cleric had built in Iraq under Saddam Hussein - a necessity since Moqtada was the inheritor of a distinguished line of militant Shiite clerics who had been assassinated for challenging the Baathist regime. When Baghdad fell on April 9, Sadr was first out of the blocks in the race to build a power base in the Shiite community. Within weeks, Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood had been renamed...
...over Yassin's killing was hardly confined to the "Sunni Triangle" that has nurtured the insurgency against the U.S. and its allies. Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the single most influential leader in Iraq, called on Muslims to unite against Israel, while the more militant Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr offered the Palestinians "moral and physical support." In an already tense transition process, the extent to which the U.S. is viewed as complicit in an Israeli action that has outraged Iraqis will not make the task of U.S. soldiers and officials there any easier...
...even the IGC has now reneged on its support for the procedure - has left it dead in the water. Discussion is currently under way over an alternative, possibly expanding the IGC to include political actors with significant support that are currently outside of it, such as the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The IGC is reportedly also considering the option of a new provisional government being appointed by a national gathering of stakeholders, convened not under the auspices of the U.S. or the IGC, but rather by the UN or the Arab League. Washington's tutelage of Iraq's political...