Word: sadr
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...past year. Like Jaafari, Maliki is a Shi'ite Islamist of the Dawa party who spent some of his exile in Iran (the rest was in Damascus, while Jaafari went to London); like Jaafari he owes his position to the backing of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Both men have been accused of having a sectarian outlook despite their public embrace of national unity; both are Iraqi nationalists who oppose the dismembering of Iraq into semi-autonomous mini states; both would also abide by the wishes of Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who helped...
...favored Abdul Adel Mahdi as his replacement. Not only is there resentment created by U.S. intervention in the political process, but Adel-Mahdi is the candidate of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the arch-rival of Jaafari's major backer, the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr. More likely is the emergence of a weak compromise candidate to preside over a fractious government facing divisive issues ranging from revising the constitution and oil revenues to dealing with the militias responsible for growing sectarian strife. Not surprising, then, that Secretary Rice warned Wednesday that violence in Iraq will...
...While Allawi says 15 of 18 provinces are controlled by forces friendly to the new Iraqi government, that grip is shaky in Sunni areas. Even in the relatively subdued Shi'ite south, coalition forces and their Iraqi recruits face daily harassment from militants loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. And the military believes that the al-Zarqawi-led insurgency is becoming more ruthless and resilient. "If we don't kill or capture them," says a U.S. general in Iraq, "they move on to fight somewhere else...
...standoff, has insisted that it resolve the issue both speedily and unanimously. That demand will likely translate into a compromise candidate, and Abdul-Mahdi doesn't necessarily fit that bill: not only has he come out publicly against Jaafari, but Jaafari's principal backer is radical cleric Moqtada Sadr, whose militia and political organization are at loggerheads with Abdul-Mahdi's SCIRI. In the end, the Shi'ites may be inclined to find a more neutral candidate not affiliated with either faction - a candidate who would, in point of fact, start out even weaker than Jaafari...
...weak prime minister is precisely what the U.S. doesn't want now. After all, Washington has made clear that the first priority of a new government should be taking down the militias, with Sadr's Mehdi Army and the SCIRI-affiliated Badr brigade the focus of U.S. military action in recent months. But disarming these groups won't be any easier for a new prime minister than it was for Jaafari, because the basic dynamic won't have changed...