Word: standoff
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...ever quite sure where al-Sadr stands. The rebellious Shi'ite cleric is a master of the mixed message, and last week he flipped so often between vows of violence and offers to negotiate that even when the two-week-old standoff between his Mahdi Army and combined U.S. and Iraqi-government forces seemed about to end, it wasn't clear if it had. Did he really intend to quit the shrine? Or was he actually planning to resume combat, as he later urged his followers, against the enemy forces still poised outside? As one of his spokesmen, Sheik Ahmed...
...interim government to stress that even after three weeks of violent defiance, it wants to draw Sadr into the political process, for the simple reason that he's too dangerous to them outside. Indeed, the government will quietly breathe a sigh of relief if Sadr emerges from the standoff unscathed, because if he'd been killed during the battle his followers would likely have waged a low-intensity guerrilla war against the U.S. and its Iraqi allies for the foreseeable future...
...clerical power outside of the seminary, in the kingdom of politics. One crucial difference, of course, is that Khomeini's revolution had the support of the merchant middle class, whereas in Iraq they're in opposition to the rabblerouser Moqtada. But the emotional tide generated by the Najaf standoff threatens a sea-change, which may be why Sistani is attempting to channel it behind his own leadership by calling a march on the shrine city...
...board, but he's reluctant to accord them legitimacy, and he may be assuming that the siege has actually further weakened Allawi politically by demonstrating how much of the strategic decision making over Iraqi security remains in U.S. hands. (Accounts differ over who exactly decided to escalate the standoff in Najaf into a fullblown battle, but educated opinion appears to confine the range of possible answers to either the Marine commanders on the ground at Najaf, or U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte...
...Moqtada Sadr's political ambitions give him an incentive to peacefully end the standoff at Najaf - although he?s unlikely to do it in a way that loses face. If he emerges triumphant from yet another showdown with the Americans bringing an end to a stalemate that had improbably become a national crisis (even if it was largely of his own making), Sadr could conceivably even expand his following. To achieve that he'll have to be able to demonstrate whatever deal was struck to pull his own men out of the holy sites also resulted in a withdrawal...