Word: sadr
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...Sadr's fierce young lieutenants apply a puritanical Islamic creed when and where they can. They insist women go veiled, they bar Western music and dress, they censor films and close--or burn down--liquor stores. In Najaf they have set up an office for the "Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice," just as the Taliban did in Afghanistan. Al-Sadr has authorized his followers to set up illegal courts and prisons in Baghdad and eight southern cities, where al-Sadr enemies have allegedly been tortured...
...Sadr has financed his rise by entering the booming religious-tourism business, cornering the market on Shi'a pilgrims, who have poured into Najaf to visit its shrines. After the assassination last August of Ayatullah Mohammed Bakir al-Hakim, who used to give Friday sermons at the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf, al-Sadr's men worked to consolidate their position in the town--and, more important, their control over the money donated by visitors to its holy sites. Al-Sadr now controls the lockbox at the Imam Ali mosque, worth millions of dollars a year. Last October his militia...
...officials seemed to have had little inkling of the risks of going after al-Sadr. It had been obvious for months that they could not stabilize Iraq until rabble militias like the Mahdi Army were dismantled. But even some inside the Administration wonder why Bremer acted now, given the imperative of maintaining the tenuous support of the Shi'ite population in the run-up to the handover of sovereignty. "It wasn't our decision," said Brigadier General Hertling, whose units lost eight men in the initial fire fight with al-Sadr's men last week. An aide to an Iraqi...
...forces in Iraq. Since the beginning of the occupation, the U.S. has monitored the moves of Iran's most powerful Shi'ite clerics, who supported the ouster of one longtime enemy, Saddam Hussein, but now bristle at the presence of another one, the U.S., on their doorstep. Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American Iraqi cleric who launched the Shi'ite revolt, has ties to some conservative Iranian clerics. Current and former U.S. officials say Iran has also funneled money and weapons to other Shi'ite militias in Iraq. U.S. intelligence officials believe Iranian spies continue to slip across Iran...
...Iran actively aiding the revolt against the U.S.? That isn't clear. At the same press conference in which he accused Iran of "meddling," Rumsfeld said he wasn't aware of evidence that Iran was providing direct assistance to al-Sadr's militia. "We're watching it carefully," says a senior coalition military official. "We haven't seen a lot of evidence that suggests that." U.S. intelligence officials say the Tehran-funded Badr corps, the biggest Shi'ite militia, has stayed on the sidelines of the uprising, at least so far. Says a senior U.S. intelligence official: "The Iranians screw...