Word: shahristani
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...Even before the auction, analysts warned that Iraq's plans for attracting the investment necessary to crank up its output were overly optimistic. Iraq plans to retain ownership of its oil, but make long-term agreements with foreign companies to run the operations. But Oil Minister Hussein Shahristani demanded that oil companies lower their profit expectations, offering to pay them $2 for every barrel pumped in Iraq rather than the $4-a-barrel rate sought by oil executives. Chevron, which had negotiated for a year to develop Iraq's second-biggest field, West Qurna, pulled out of the deal...
...last February, that patchwork of compromises looked strong enough to win in parliament. Iraq's Cabinet approved the draft, and Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani promised U.S. officials that the law would be in place by the end of May. But months later, that confidence--and the deadline--has evaporated. Fierce arguments have raged over how much control Baghdad and the Iraq National Oil Co. should have over production. Oil workers' unions argue that the law gives Big Oil huge profits while potentially undercutting the interests of Iraqis. The major union staged a demonstration in July in Basra, calling...
Speculation in the Iraqi media centers on three candidates, all considered religious moderates: the Dawa Party's Ibrahim al-Jaffari, S.C.I.R.I.'s Adil Abd al-Mahdi and Sistani prot??g?? Hussein Shahristani. Whoever gets the nod, Washington will find itself having to deal with a group that has no natural affinity with the U.S. "These are all people who have one reason or another to dislike America," says pollster Sadoun al-Dulame, executive director of the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies. "If George Bush has to do business with these people, well, good luck...
Sistani's personal history would be interesting but unimportant if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq. The fall of Saddam left the country in chaos, with a power vacuum at the top. The Shi'ite masses naturally looked to Sistani for direction, says Shahristani, and the ayatullah felt compelled by religious duty to step in. "He believes at a crisis time like this, the marja must guide the people," says al-Qurayshi. So the cleric who had shied away from politics all his life began to issue fatwas of profound political importance...
...thinks Sistani is close to giving such an order. He is too "humane," says Shahristani. When al-Sadr's soldiers disobeyed Sistani's directive not to spill blood in Najaf, Sistani "wept for hours" over the young Iraqi lives that were lost, says an intimate. A diplomat in Baghdad regards Sistani as a "cautious man who doesn't go out on a limb." Sistani's men say he has repeatedly doused al-Sadr's uprisings because he fears violence will only cost the Shi'ites their legitimate claim to power...