Word: sciri
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...There's no question the Americans have less influence than they had before. The Shi'ite parties in the negotiations - Dawa, SCIRI and Badr Organization - dug in their heels so much that President George W. Bush called SCIRI leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim to ask him for more flexibility. The president failed to convince the cleric. Other accounts say the Americans in the embassy gave up trying to broker deals two days before the parliament accepted the draft...
...Moqtada al-Sadr, leader of millions of poor Shi'ites in Sadr City in Baghdad and across the south, appears to be leaning against the constitution and his followers have demonstrated alongside Sunnis over the issue of federalism. SCIRI, Badr and Dawa all support the constitution. Significantly, they all have support from Iran while al-Sadr's relationship with Iraq's Persian neighbor has been stormy. His opposition to the constitution is more about limiting the influence of Iran rather than hard opposition to the principle of Iraqi federalism, while SCIRI and Badr are packed with Iranian sympathizers...
...What happened? As the day wore on, it seemed there were agreements on the role of Islam and Kurdish autonomy, but federalism remained a sticking point. The Sunni Arabs refused to accept the principle of a southern federal region as demanded by the head of SCIRI, a religious Shi'ite party with ties to Iran. So the Shi'ite and Kurdish delegates stopped including the Sunnis in talks. "In the last two days, there have been no general meetings including everybody," said Kurdish committee member Mahmoud Othman. Instead, he said, the negotiations were held between "interested parties," which usually included...
...Kurds and Shi'ites crafted a deal between themselves and spent Monday evening trying to convince the Sunnis to come on board. They failed. "They are trying to push us aside," said Sunni negotiator Saleh Mutlak. Finally, the chairman of the committee, Sheikh Humam al-Hamoudi of SCIRI, presented a draft to the parliament without settling the issue of federalism. Fuming Sunnis warned darkly of civil war while pledging to vote down the document in the October referendum...
...March 2003 invasion, military sources say, elements of up to 46 Iranian infantry and missile brigades moved to buttress the border. Positioned among them were units of the Badr Corps, formed in the 1980s as the armed wing of the Iraqi Shi'ite group known by its acronym SCIRI, now the most powerful party in Iraq. Divided into northern, central and southern axes, Badr's mission was to pour into Iraq in the chaos of the invasion to seize towns and government offices, filling the vacuum left by the collapse of Saddam's regime. As many as 12,000 armed...