Word: shi'a
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...adapt his political persona to the prevailing circumstances. During his 24-year exile from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, he dropped his given name and went by "Jawad," to avoid detection by the dictator's spies. Returning to Baghdad in 2003, Maliki seemed no different from the legion of Shi'ite partisans who took up posts in the U.S.-installed interim government. He brought vigor and venom to his job on the committee responsible for purging the government of Saddam's mainly Sunni elite. He also spoke of reordering Iraq according to the fundamental principles of the Koran. In a couple...
Until then, most Iraqis had never heard of him, and didn't know what to expect from this phlegmatic figure in ill-fitting suits. Maliki didn't help matters by constantly shifting his position on key issues. One moment he supported the radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr; the next, he was ordering Iraqi forces to smash Sadr's militia. One minute he was being described by President Bush as "my man"; the next, he was fulminating against U.S. interference in Iraqi politics. "It's like every six months there's a new Maliki," says a Western official...
...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's movement once enjoyed among Iraq's Shi'ites seems to have declined too as Iraqis appear to grow increasingly weary of sectarian politics. A recent poll published by the National Media Center, which is funded by the Iraqi government, said 42% of Iraqis hoped to see secular candidates win in the coming provincial elections (31% said they...
...government poll is questionable, but the results appear to be in step with popular sentiment toward the Sadrists in Baghdad, where many have come to see the cleric's followers as thugs and opportunists. "I am not satisfied with the ideology of these people," says Rasim Hassan Haikel, a Shi'ite shopkeeper in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Huriya, a longtime Mahdi Army stronghold...
...Baghdad A DEADLY CAMPAIGN As Iraq's Jan. 31 provincial elections near, violence against politicians has escalated. Hassan Zaidan al-Luhaibi, a Sunni leader and former member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, was killed by a suicide bomber on Jan. 18, just two days after Shi'ite candidate Haitham Kadhim al-Husaini was fatally shot. The murders come as influential Shi'ite cleric Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani has urged Iraqis to vote despite dissatisfaction with previous elections...