Word: moqtada
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...join its police forces or its Governing Council. The indigenous insurgent challenge has grown and multiplied: U.S. troops now fight on two fronts, facing both Sunni insurgents whose number include both former Baathist officers, nationalists and Islamists, as well as Shiite fighters loyal to the militant rabble rouser Moqtada Sadr - and, of course, a foreign terrorist element whose frequent high-profile suicide attacks, such as Monday's killing of the head of the Governing Council, Izzedine Saleem, sow chaos and keep the occupation authority on the defensive. The prevailing paradox is that while the Coalition's forces...
...month-long standoff with Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi militia, however, has thus far defied all efforts at a mediated solution. Fierce clashes provoked by Sadrist fire this week drew the Americans ever closer to fighting outside the sacred shrines in Najaf and Karbala. Sadr appears to be riding on the U.S. campaign against him as a means to eclipse his rivals in the battle for Shiite support. His tactics appear to involve goading the U.S. into increasingly risky actions around the holy sites, and then publicly lambasting Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani for failing to act on his warning...
...nature of a post-occupation Iraq is taking shape. With less than seven weeks to go before the June 30th handoff, its becoming clear that at least some of the insurgents will have a significant role in the new Iraq. First at Fallujah, and now at negotiations with followers Moqtada Sadr in Najaf, U.S. officials appear to have recognized that it may be difficult to prevail militarily against the insurgents without inflicting casualties and damage that would turn the civilian population even more decisively against the occupation...
...Shiite cities. Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey of the 1st Armored Division has proposed creating a Najaf Brigade to police the city, which would initially comprise 1,800 men drawn from militias loyal to local tribal chiefs and to the various Shiite political parties, and could include members of Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi militia. Dempsey proposed similar arrangements for recruiting some of Sadr's men in five other cities. The fact that U.S. military commanders are now talking openly about absorbing insurgent elements that the Bush administration had only weeks earlier vowed to destroy may indicate a shift in Iraq toward...
...three-way game, using his confrontation with the Americans to challenge his political rivals in the Shiite community. Even as negotiations continue, his forces are clashing with U.S. troops at Karbala, Kufa and Baghdad. The U.S. objective may be to weaken the Mehdi militia and raise the pressure on Moqtada, but the firebrand cleric appears to be using that pressure to his own ends - particularly to challenge his more moderate rivals, chief among them Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Sadr has long rejected what he sees as Sistani's quiescence toward the occupation, and he cleverly judged that Sistani's silence...