Word: sciri
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Iraqi Shi'ism, located in Najaf)." Of the other marjah, he says, "some of them have no followers." He downplays the importance, both political and military, of one of the most senior marjah, Ayatollah Mohammed Sayeed al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and its military wing, the Badr corps. "The Badr corps have ten or twelve thousand supporters while three quarters of Iraq are soldiers of Sadr. The Iraqi people don't follow any marjah but my father. And Haeri is important now, because my father deputized...
...second ominous sign came a week later when the best organized Shiite political group in Iraq, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, decided to boycott the U.S..-sponsored, inaugural meeting of Iraqi political groups preparing for a transitional government. Although SCIRI has been on speaking terms with Washington since Gulf War I, its Tehran-based leader, Ayatullah Mohammed Bakr al Hakim warned before Gulf War II that U.S. forces would be attacked as occupiers if they lingered too long in Iraq after ousting Saddam. In Kerbala this week, Hakim's brother Abdul Aziz, who is SCIRI...
...intentions, an insistence on Iraqi control, and a rejection of anything that smacks of occupation. Nor do they share Washington's hostility to Tehran. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld warned darkly Tuesday of Iranian "infiltration" and meddling in Iraqi politics. But much of the Iranian influence is indigenous to Iraq. SCIRI, the largest of the Iraqi political groupings, has been based there for years. Agitation for an Iran-style Islamic revolution is coming from internal Iraqi groups, while the leader of the key Iran-based group is actually speaking against going the theocratic route. And the scale of the outpouring of Shiite...
...simply intended as a meet-and-greet, designed to open a discussion. Chalabi, in fact, didn't even attend; he simply sent a representative. More ominous absences, though, were the two militant groups most influential among Iraq's Shiite majority, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Dawa Party. Thousands of their supporters turned out in the streets on nearby Nasiriyah to protest against the dominant role being played by the U.S. in shaping post-Saddam Iraq, chanting "Yes to freedom; Yes to Islam; No to America; No to Saddam...
...objection to the U.S. presence - as long as it is temporary. Of course there's a fierce struggle for influence among Shiite clerics right now, in which context a prominent pro-U.S. ayatollah was stabbed to death last week. And many Iraqi Shiites take their politics secular. But SCIRI's leadership has considerable influence in Najaf, and if they're alienated from the process launched by General Garner, political stability could prove elusive. If the U.S. objective is to exclude groups with ties to Iran, that could put it on a collision course with many Iraqi Shia...