Word: sadr
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...Sadr's ability to survive such face-offs may have wider reverberations. Two months after sovereignty was handed over to Iraqis, large swaths of the country are controlled by a flourishing assortment of insurgents. U.S. forces have abdicated power in Fallujah, been chased out of Ramadi and Samarra, and are scrambling to keep hold of Baqubah, Tikrit and Mosul. Even in Baghdad, gunmen have turned areas of the capital into deadly no-go zones. While U.S. and Iraqi officials insist they have the firepower to contain the violence, the agonizing search for a way out in Najaf was the latest...
Since the beginning of the battle with al-Sadr early this month, the Allawi government, backed by the U.S., made clear its determination to prevent Najaf, an ancient city sacred to the country's majority Shi'ites, from becoming a Fallujah-style sanctuary for militants. The Prime Minister may also have chosen to strike at the Mahdi Army in hopes of sending a strong signal to other rebels: Look what happens when you go up against this government. Allawi, widely regarded among Iraqis as little more than a puppet of the U.S., needed to come...
...easy at all. A tactical victory at the shrine would rouse wholesale Shi'ite resistance to his government. A decision to back down would destroy Allawi's ability to impose order on insurgents across the country. At the Pentagon, officials were keen to be done with al-Sadr once and for all but acknowledged it would take an unacceptable level of force to do the job. They insisted that they were not calling the shots: any decision to storm the mosque would be Allawi's. The Prime Minister declared that any offensive into the shrine would be carried...
...without even being there--into the national conference that met last week to name an interim legislature. Delegates who were supposed to focus on participation in the democratic process found their business eclipsed by the crisis in Najaf. A conference delegation trooped there hoping to talk al-Sadr into leaving the shrine and transforming his militia into a political movement, only to be refused an audience with the cleric. The next day, he said he might be willing to comply, then said he would seek "victory or martyrdom," then turned accommodating again...
...Allawi had lost patience with all the tense back and forth. He issued a "final call" for al-Sadr to leave the shrine compound and disband his militia. And for hours that night, U.S. planes dropped bombs, gunships strafed rebel positions near the shrine, and tanks shelled militia hideaways as explosions filled the sky over the Old City with billowing smoke and a deadly orange glow. U.S. military commanders said they were merely "shaping the battlefield" in case a frontal assault was ordered. But al-Sadr is adept at divining when to back down. On Friday he promised to "turn...