Word: shrine
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...days, the warnings of a decisive military showdown echoed across Najaf as fighting raged between U.S. forces and Shi'ite militiamen for control of the holy city. The Shi'ites' truculent leader, cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, vowed not to leave his bunker in the sect's sacred Imam Ali shrine "until the last drop of my blood has been spilled." The U.S. Marine colonel commanding American and Iraqi-government troops battling the stubborn gunmen of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army proclaimed his men were ready "to finish this fight that the Muqtada militia started." Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister...
...Iraqi leaders led by Allawi's National Security Adviser, Muwaffak al-Rubaie, arrived from Baghdad to open talks with al-Sadr aides. U.S. troops suspended their offensive against the Mahdi Army, while the fighters who had battled the Americans hand to hand melted back into the sanctuary of the shrine...
...establish popular legitimacy or law and order amid the chaos of post-Saddam Iraq. Allawi had set himself up as a tough guy ready to impose draconian measures to quell the country's relentless violence. Yet taking the fight all the way to the golden-domed Imam Ali shrine, where al-Sadr's men were dug in, could spark uncontrollable rage among the country's majority Shi'ite population. Unrest had quickly spread across the Shi'ite south and into Baghdad's teeming Sadr City slums. Washington sensed that a critical turning point had been reached: a widening conflagration would...
...purportedly agreed to heed government demands to put down their weapons, leave the Imam Ali Mosque and join the political process. But the delegates' relief may be premature: Sadr's spokesman made clear that he was going nowhere until U.S. and Iraqi government forces pulled back from around the shrine and a cease-fire was in force. And while the latest truce announcement looks set to forestall, once again, a direct assault on his militia forces, it's far from clear that the promised disengagement will occur along the lines announced in Baghdad on Wednesday...
...although the national conference was extended by a day to accommodate the delegation's efforts, Sadr was in no hurry to bring the matter to a close. His own reading of the political winds in Iraq plainly suggests that as long as he's inside Shiite Islam's holiest shrine surrounded by American troops, tanks and aircraft, he holds a clear political advantage. Although the latest pause in the military effort to dislodge Sadr and his men from the shrine may grate at the morale of the U.S. troops gearing up to do the job, Allawi may have had little...