Word: sadr
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...maintained that the militias perform a valuable service, defending neighborhoods from attack by Sunni insurgents. In interviews with TIME, he has described the militias as akin to neighborhood watch committees. Bush may also find al-Hakim unwilling to listen to any complaints about the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr. Although the two Shi'ite clerics are rivals, they have a mutual interest in keeping the U.S. at arm's length. Al-Hakim knows that if he goes along with any American plan to crack down on al-Sadr's militia, his own Badr Organization will likely be next...
...Scenario 1: The President really intended to pressure al-Maliki on al-Sadr and failed. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence for this. There were two spectacular-one might even say suspicious-front-page news leaks in the New York Times in the days before the summit. First there was the report that Hizballah was training members of al-Sadr's militia. This placed in one bull's-eye almost all Bush's favorite evildoers-Hizballah; Iran and Syria (which support Hizballah); and al-Sadr, whose Shi'ite organization has been responsible for much of the recent violence against...
...slap-Sadr scenario was reinforced by the second New York Times leak-a memo from National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to the President, in which Hadley expressed despair over al-Maliki's incompetence. "He impressed me as a leader who wanted to be strong, but was having difficulty figuring out how to do so," Hadley wrote. The conventional assumption was that this was a purposeful White House leak, sending the message that Bush wanted al-Maliki to allow U.S. forces to move against the Mahdi Army, a step that al-Maliki has resisted so far-and with good reason, since...
...There is a small, but not insignificant, faction in the U.S. military that thinks the only way to stabilize Baghdad is to forcibly disarm al-Sadr's militia. The Hizballah story may have been unofficial, second-tier military lobbying. And the Hadley memo? "A parting gift from Don Rumsfeld," guessed an Iraq expert with close ties to the White House. "He's the only one who had access and motivation. The memo proves his point: it's the political process, not the military operation, that's the problem in Iraq." Would Rumsfeld be so spiteful as to embarrass the President...
...Iraq from which coalition forces have already been withdrawn. There Shi'ite militias backed by Iran have taken control, intimidating government forces into submission and terrorizing Sunnis. On several occasions Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, has had to plead with radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to restrain his fighters from killing soldiers and police--with limited results...