Word: interims
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...state of play in Iraq today. Even if the battle for control of the mosque ends in al-Sadr's retreat, the struggle for control of the country is far from over. Resolution of the standoff in Najaf may help boost the legitimacy of the interim U.S.-backed government and its Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, among Iraqis fed up with al-Sadr's truculence. And yet the renegade cleric still commands thousands of fervent followers willing to take up arms anytime at his order, and his strident defiance of the U.S. has won him an even greater number of noncombat...
...Iraqi Shiites to "save the (Imam Ali) Mosque" is a telling indicator of how the siege changed Iraq's power equation. Sistani has demanded that the U.S. and Iraqi forces withdraw from around the mosque and that Sadr's gunmen leave before he'll enter. The U.S. and the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi may have no option but to comply, because alienating Sistani, the most influential cleric in Iraq, would be political suicide. Getting Sadr's fighters out of the mosque would, of course, accomplish one of the government's primary objectives. Doing so along the lines...
...closing in on the shrine, while many Sadrist fighters had already fled. But their "defense" of the most revered of Shiite shrines under fire from a widely loathed "infidel" army has further enhanced Moqtada Sadr's already considerable political standing among Iraqi Shiites - a fact that has led the 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...
...Sadr's challenge occurs less in the realm of religion than in the realm of politics, where he's riding a wave of anger among the young Shiite urban poor frustrated by their lack of progress, enraged by the occupation, skeptical of the interim government and increasingly disappointed in the efforts of the traditional clergy, led by Sistani, to transform their circumstances. He's built his movement on the basis of a widening generational and social class rift among Iraqi Shiites. Sadr's challenge to both the clerical establishment and the traditional Shiite political parties is giving voice...
VIEW FROM BAGHDAD: A Q&A with Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi...