Word: sistani
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High-profile visits by political figures are relatively rare in Najaf, the quiet holy city in southern Iraq where Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani lives. Sistani, the most venerated Shi'ite religious leader in the country, shuns the limelight. But it fell his way last week nonetheless when Iraqi Prime Ministry Nouri al-Maliki and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker appeared in Najaf separately within days of each other. It raised questions whether Sistani is making a comeback as a voice in political decision-making in Iraq...
...years Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr have seesawed with each other as Iraq's two main Shi'ite power players. In the early days of the occupation, Sistani's call for calm undoubtedly allowed American troops to avoid fierce resistance to their presence in southern Iraq. But Sistani's repeated appeals for peace lost their weight as sectarian violence rose in Iraq, with Sadr leading the Mahdi Army militia in an inexorable year-long quest for Shi'ite revenge following the bombing of a revered shrine in Samarra in early 2006. As a result, Sadr, a mere cleric, towered...
...defunct cease-fire if attacks by government forces continued. And his response to a demand by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that he disband his militia or face exclusion from the political process was typically ambiguous: Sadr said he would put the matter to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf, and disband his army if Sistani, the most powerful Shi'ite religious authority in Iraq, ordered him to do so. That may simply have been a maneuver for sympathy on the Shi'ite street; Sistani has previously declined to be drawn on the matter of Sadr's militia...
...Minister, authorized U.S. forces to attack the Mahdi Army in Baghdad and the holy city of Najaf. Then a poorly armed and ill-trained band, Sadr's men were easily routed, but Allawi didn't have the stomach to deliver the coup de grace: he allowed Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the senior Shi'ite cleric, to broker a peace that allowed Sadr to keep his fighters and, more importantly, his freedom...
...heartlands, respectively. "The governors of those provinces were literally building trenches on their border, and they are now meeting regularly. You had the highest-ranking Sunni politician in the country, Tariq al-Hashemi, go to Najaf to meet with the leading Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani. All of this would have been unthinkable only a few months...