Word: sadr
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Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!" The chants of the faithful drown out the gunfire around the mosque in Kufa. Thousands have gathered to hear Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraq's best-known rebel cleric, lead Friday prayers. A fire fight is raging for control of a nearby bridge, between members of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and U.S. forces. There's another battle up the road in al-Sadr's hometown, Najaf. As the mosque broadcasts reports of glorious victories over U.S. tanks, the worshippers seem unmoved by the fighting. "The U.S. troops do this every Friday," says one of the faithful, Sheik...
...itself has taken a stunning blow. We are still recovering from the last week of April, when the Abu Ghraib photos were revealed and the U.S. military chose not to fight the Islamic radicals in Fallujah (a retreat compounded by last week's decision not to pursue Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army). Taken together, those events represent a coherent pattern of behavior-that of a schoolyard bully, who tortures the weak and runs away from the strong. This is, sadly, the way Abu Ghraib and Fallujah are perceived by our enemies. I was traveling through the Middle East...
...terrorists and is now turning security over to local militias. Politically, we have tossed the ball to Lakhdar Brahimi and the U.N. But even Brahimi doesn't have much stroke. The real governing authority in Iraq appears to be the Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, who dictated the al-Sadr solution last week, and in effect vetoed the interim constitution the U.S. proposed and will, no doubt, have final say over Brahimi's new government. The President pretends that none of this is happening. Most Americans sense the President is just pretending, and they are impatiently waiting for someone...
...same insurgents in charge of security under the rubric of a new Iraqi security force working in cooperation with the Marines. A number of reports now suggest that a similar deal is about to be struck with the Sadrists. The U.S. would withdraw from the shrine cities, Moqtada Sadr's militia would be turned into a political party and some of its fighters would be incorporated into the Iraqi security forces. Although the U.S. had previously demanded that Sadr be taken into custody to stand trial over his alleged involvement in the killing of a rival cleric last year...
...purpose is to organize elections for December or January. U.S. commanders on the ground would prefer to see the Baathists and the Sadrists competing at the ballot box than taking pot shots at it. And there's good reason to believe that can be achieved in the case of Sadr, at least, who has long embraced Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's demand for elections. The firebrand cleric has perfected the art of campaigning for Shiite popular support by attacking the Americans - the U.S. was late in recognizing that far from isolating him, American military action against Sadr was actually boosting...