Word: shrine
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...officials say their strategy in Najaf and elsewhere has worked to turn powerful Shiites against Sadr. It's certainly true that two of his key rivals, the SCIRI and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, have called with increasingly insistence for Sadr's men leave the shrine cities. But they're also calling on the U.S. to do the same, and have shied away from armed confrontations with the Sadrists. The rebel cleric clearly believes he can make the U.S. strategy work to his advantage because military actions in Karbala and Najaf deepens the hostility of ordinary Shiites towards the Coalition, potentially...
...month-long standoff with Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi militia, however, has thus far defied all efforts at a mediated solution. Fierce clashes provoked by Sadrist fire this week drew the Americans ever closer to fighting outside the sacred shrines in Najaf and Karbala. Sadr appears to be riding on the U.S. campaign against him as a means to eclipse his rivals in the battle for Shiite support. His tactics appear to involve goading the U.S. into increasingly risky actions around the holy sites, and then publicly lambasting Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani for failing to act on his warning...
...While the Fallujah deal is holding, there is no specific agreement at Najaf. Sadr appears to be holding out despite mounting pressure from within the Shiite clerical establishment for him to avoid a military confrontation in any of the shrine cities, and Paul Bremer appears to be insisting that Sadr be arrested before June 30 to face charges over the murder of a rival cleric a year ago. Local Shiite leaders had been working on a deal in which Sadr would agree to disband his militia in exchange for an understanding that he would be held only after the transfer...
...moderate rivals, chief among them Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Sadr has long rejected what he sees as Sistani's quiescence toward the occupation, and he cleverly judged that Sistani's silence in recent days despite the Abu Ghraib scandal and U.S. military action that damaged a mosque in the shrine city of Karbala may be damaging Sistani's standing among Shiites. Sadr - whose widely respected father had challenged Sistani's "quietist" moderation under Saddam's regime, before its agents murdered the elder Sadr - has offered to disband his militia if ordered to do so by the Grand Ayatollah. Much...
...dark blue Volvo sped toward the guard post near Najaf's Safi al-Safa shrine just as the muezzin began his evening call to prayers. Inside the car, three gunmen prepared to fire. Their targets were members of the Mahdi Army, a band of militants loyal to the firebrand Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has holed up in Najaf for the past month to avoid capture by the 2,500 U.S. soldiers surrounding the city. As the Volvo neared the tiny brick-and-reed building, a gunman in the car opened up with his AK-47, hitting...