Word: nouri
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Riyadh al-Nouri was several key things. He was the brother-in-law of Moqtada al-Sadr and a prominent official in the anti-American Shi'ite cleric's political organization. He was also, at one point in 2005, accused of spying for the Americans by members of his own party. And so, when he was shot and killed in the city of Kufa, reportedly by a gunman on a motorcycle, as he returned from Friday prayers, there were multiple suspects...
Followers of the cleric and members of his thousands-strong militia, the Mahdi Army - which has been engaged in heavy fighting with Iraqi and U.S. forces in recent weeks - expressed outrage on Friday afternoon, as news spread of Nouri's death. The province of Najaf, where Nouri was killed, has seen a rise in intra-Shi'ite violence in the past year, mostly in the form of tit-for-tat killings between Sadr's Mahdi Army and other Shi'ite militias, including the rival Badr Brigade, which has links to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party...
...Badr Brigade, which dominates Iraqi security forces throughout much of southern Iraq, is behind this latest assassination. Still, on Friday, rumors circulated among some Sadrists in Najaf that the assassination may have come from within their own faction. Moqtada al-Sadr, however, publicly blamed the United States for Nouri's death. "The occupier wants to cause sedition," said Sheikh Abdel Hadi al-Mohammedawi, an official at the Sadr office in the southern city of Karbala, speaking on behalf of Sadr. But Mohammedawi, also said that Sadr is urging his followers to stay calm for now and not to raise their...
...Multinational Forces, which operates in the Najaf area, told TIME: "I can tell you that one of our Military Transition Teams operating in Najaf was sent out to get an update on the situation and I know the Government of Najaf called us confirming that Riyadh al-Nouri was killed." But Conway was not aware of any violent reaction...
Lesson One: The Americans don't have as tight a hold on the government of Nouri al-Mailiki as one might think. Many Iraqis hostile to the government take Maliki to be little more than an American stooge. But Petraeus revealed to lawmakers that Maliki went against his advice in launching an attack against the Mahdi Army in Basra, where Maliki's forces were quickly bogged down and bloodied by Sadr's street fighters. That means the Americans may not have the ability to stop the Iraqi government from an even worse strategic blunder in a place where Sunni insurgents...