Word: moqtada
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...Jaafari, who has complained of Western meddling, could of course stay on: He has the backing of the Shi'ite populist Moqtada Sadr, whose Mehdi Army is one of the most powerful militias in Iraq. The support of Sadr's parliamentary delegation had given Jaafari victory over Abdul Mahdi by a margin of one vote in the list's internal election of a candidate for prime minister. But faced with the combined opposition of the Kurds, the Sunnis, his Shi'ite rivals and the U.S. (which also controls the Iraqi security forces), Jaafari will struggle to create a working government...
...Many have argued that the U.S. pressure against Jaafari and his current chief political ally, firebrand cleric Moqtada al Sadr, could actually backfire and bolster their position with a wave of anti-U.S. sentiment. Nonetheless, internal pressures on Jaafari to withdraw are mounting. On the same day that Rice and Straw made their visit, a senior member of the Shi'ite alliance asked Jaafari to step down, making a schism likely within the national assembly's leading voting block. If a faction of the alliance (the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) backs out of its agreement...
...Abdel Mahdi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq . It's not as if Jaafari was even the unanimous choice of the Shi'ite bloc - he won the nomination by only one vote, and then only because of the backing of radical cleric and militia leader Moqtada Sadr. But once the Kurds and Americans went public with demands for his ouster, the Shi'ite alliance, not surprisingly, dug in its heels...
...were looking for a pretext to start a civil war. Their fears were further fueled in the bloody two days after the attack, when Iraq became a sectarian slaughterhouse. Instead of protecting citizens from each other, National Police units stood by as Shi'ite rioters - and rival militiamen from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army - stormed Sunni mosques and swarmed over Sunni neighborhoods, according to numerous reports, including some confirmed by U.S. Gen. George Casey, commander of American forces in Iraq...
...Jaafari, widely disliked outside of his immediate support base, won the nomination of the Shi'ite alliance by only one vote, thanks to the intervention of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr, who threw his 32 votes (among the 128 seats held by the Shi'ite alliance) behind the incumbent. Jaafari's rival in that contest was none other than Abdel Mahdi, a candidate preferred by the U.S. and a top official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, with which Sadr has been engaged in a long-running battle for Shi'ite political supremacy...