Word: moqtada
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...Najaf: Will Moqtada Take the Initiative...
...Shiite clerical establishment at Najaf would like nothing more than to see the radical firebrand Moqtada Sadr take his militia and his confrontation with the Americans out of town. But as much as they loathe Moqtada as an upstart troublemaker, even the most moderate among them are fiercely opposed to any U.S. military operation against him in the Shiite holy city. Everyone from Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the moderate elder of the Iraqi clerics on whose consent the entire transition process rests, to Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN diplomat to whom the Bush administration is looking to devise a political formula that...
...result will be his arrest by Coalition forces, he may choose once more to initiate a battle, as he did when he launched his uprising in response to a warrant for his arrest. Confrontation at Najaf carries the risk of a wider Shiite uprising against the U.S. forces. Although Moqtada Sadr does not represent a majority of Shiites and is loathed by the clerical establishment, his path of confrontation has struck a chord among significant sections of the Shiite urban poor. Even among his detractors in the clergy, it's not clear that hostility towards Moqtada is greater than antipathy...
...leaders appeared to be unraveling, Thursday, as insurgents failed to meet the U.S. demand that they surrender their heavy weapons. But a renewed outbreak of fighting there would likely further polarize Iraqi public opinion against the Coalition. In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, meanwhile, the wanted rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr appeared to be mimicking the Fallujah insurgents' taunting of the U.S. military, breaking off negotiations in the expectation that the Coalition would pay a heavy political price for going into the city with guns blazing...
...Iraqi caretaker government. That's hardly a hypothetical problem, as the current standoffs at Fallujah and Najaf show: Iraqi Governing Council leaders, including one or two tapped for top positions in the caretaker government, objected furiously to U.S. tactics at Fallujah and against the Shiite supporters of the cleric Moqtada Sadr. The fact that the U.S. military backed off in both Najaf and Fallujah to allow Iraqi politicians space to try and resolve those standoffs through negotiations is telling. While the U.S. military is following the natural instinct of an occupying army to establish its authority and protect its forces...