Word: sadr
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...have been killed in the past four days, and the fighting is showing no signs of abating. And the fact that the Sunni militants who have waged a year-long insurgency are now joined, in Baghdad and across the Shiite south, by militia loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has cast doubt over prospects for the U.S. achieving its political objectives in Iraq in the near future. As Republican senator Chuck Hagel put it last weekend, the U.S. may be "dangerously close" to losing control in Iraq...
...hopes to rely increasingly have offered little cause for comfort - mostly, the Iraqi police simply melted away when the Sadrists arrived to take over their facilities, and in a number of cases the police were actually seen fighting alongside the militants. If the insurrection by members of Sadr's "Army of the Mahdi" succeeds in its goal of sparking a general rebellion among Iraq's Shiite majority - which some U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe it has - the U.S. will have lost the political battle for post-Saddam Iraq...
...Sadr has long been the wild card factor facing the U.S. mission in Iraq. Neither the U.S. nor its Iraqi exile allies had reckoned with the strength of the underground organization the young radical cleric had built in Iraq under Saddam Hussein - a necessity since Moqtada was the inheritor of a distinguished line of militant Shiite clerics who had been assassinated for challenging the Baathist regime. When Baghdad fell on April 9, Sadr was first out of the blocks in the race to build a power base in the Shiite community. Within weeks, Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood had been renamed...
...which, as a whole comprises almost two-thirds of Iraq's population). The clerics around Sistani, and the Shiite parties on the Governing Council, see Moqtada as a dangerous hothead. But they're unlikely to align themselves with the Coalition forces against him. That's a game played by Sadr, too, who styles his movement not in opposition to Sistani, but instead as a kind of militant vanguard pursuing the same objectives - majority rule and early elections (in which, given Moqtada's extensive party organization, he could legitimately expect to fare rather well). Following the weekend's violence, Sistani called...
...Although going after Moqtada Sadr could inflame hostility and instability, the occupation authorities may no longer have any choice. The Sadrists' calls for violence has crossed a red line that the Coalition cannot afford to tolerate if it hopes to maintain the ability to dictate the rules of the political game in Iraq. For both sides this now may be a fight to the finish, with the U.S. seeking to disarm Moqtada's militias while they seek to force a U.S. withdrawal...