Word: sadr
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...Saturday, Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to one of his aides, warned the U.S. ambassador that he was "not America's man in Iraq." On Tuesday he drove home the point, ordering an end to the U.S. military cordon around the Baghdad Shi'ite stronghold of Sadr City - a demand with which the U.S. military complied. Although U.S. troops don't take orders from the Iraqi government, refusing to heed the writ of that democratically elected government would make the U.S. military presence in that country untenable. The U.S. did point out that it had been consulted...
...Maliki's order to lift the Sadr City security cordon, and his earlier rejection of U.S. timetables and demands on his government, is partly a signal to his base that he won't take orders from Washington, and partly an expression of serious differences with the implementation of the U.S. security plan. In a nutshell, his message is: Don't make me choose between Washington and Sadr City, because you know which way I'm going...
...Maliki's concern for his Shi'ite political base - which includes Moqtada al-Sadr, whose sectarian militia, the Mahdi Army, is believed to be the target of the U.S. operation in Baghdad - drives his objections to U.S. plans. Without the backing of that base he becomes simply another Iraqi politician backed by Washington but rejected by his own electorate - like Washington's erstwhile "man in Iraq," former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Maliki agrees in principle that Shi'ite political militias must be disbanded or brought under government control. But he also believes this can't be done as long...
...Maliki's political discomfort over the security cordon around Sadr City must have only intensified Monday, when the cordon failed to prevent a bomb blast at a crowded marketplace that killed dozens of Shi'ites in the area. The following day, Sadr brought Sadr City to a standstill through a general strike. A day later Maliki ordered the Americans to lift the security cordon...
...favor of the Sunnis. Mindful of Shi'ite objections, Maliki is moving slowly, and that is deepening the alienation of even those Sunnis closest to the political process. Tariq al-Hashimi, the Sunni Vice President of Iraq, for example, condemned Maliki's intervention to lift the security cordon around Sadr City, warning that this would ease the movement of Shi'ite death squads around Baghdad...