Word: sadr
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...once fearsome Muqtada al-Sadr has been very quiet lately in Iraq. Political analyst Amir Hassan Fayht says the reason the onetime Iraqi militant shows less and less political muscle is simple. "He gave it up," says Fayht, dean of the college of political science at Baghdad University, "just like that...
Indeed, al-Sadr's once formidable movement appears to be at its nadir, with the cleric himself scarcely a presence in Iraqi politics these days and his political bloc pushed to the sidelines of the provincial elections on Jan. 31. A series of military defeats at the hands of toughened Iraqi security forces plus political missteps over the past year by al-Sadr and his followers have left the future of the mass movement in doubt. And without a solid showing of popular support in the coming vote, the Sadrists appear set to lose what remains of the enormous political...
Prospects for al-Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, and the political figures who stood at the edge of it have steadily dimmed since last spring, when government forces of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki emerged as the de facto victors in battles with the Mahdi Army across southern Iraq and Baghdad. Weeks of fighting in the early months of 2008 ended in a stalemate. Since then, Iraqi security forces have rounded up scores of Sadrists with the help of U.S. troops, effectively hollowing out the movement's street power and political influence. Meanwhile, the vast popularity that al-Sadr...
...shrunk to just over half its original size of 44 MPs. In the past three years, parliament has also seen the ruling Shi'ite bloc slowly split apart. The most significant blow came in 2007 with the angry departure of dozens of followers of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. And the bloc's remaining big powers - al-Maliki's Dawa Islamic Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq - will be running on separate lists come Jan. 31, thereby splitting the Shi'ite vote...
...lost the suitcase on my first trip to Iraq eight months ago, as Iraqi and U.S. forces clashed with radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, I would have been forced to wear whatever our male Iraqi security guards picked out without me. Last March, I arrived to an onslaught of rockets and mortars fired at the nearby Green Zone, along with retaliatory coalition air strikes and the near constant thunder of helicopter blades overhead. As with other foreign reporters, my movements were always calculated, and I often donned a long black abaya and head scarf. But this time...