Word: nasiriyah
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Compared with the gilded Baghdad palaces from which Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq, the bombed-out remains of an air-defense base a few miles outside the southern city of Nasiriyah don't look much like a headquarters for the country's next government. The only intact building is a dusty, flea-infested warehouse that had no windows, no running water, no bathrooms. But that is where Ahmed Chalabi, the controversial leader of the once exiled Iraqi National Congress (I.N.C.), set up shop last week after the Pentagon airlifted him and some 600 fighters of his newly named Free Iraqi Forces...
...hurry to hand control of Iraq back to Iraqis. And with good reason: As deeply, often violently, divided as Iraq's various political and ethnic factions may be, one thing they all insist on is that they want to govern themselves. But as Tuesday's meeting near Nasiriyah between U.S. officials and a group of Iraqis selected by them showed, the process of creating even an interim Iraqi authority will be slow and contentious, and may spur opposition among many Iraqis to the presence of the U.S. and its alllies...
...even attend; he simply sent a representative. More ominous absences, though, were the two militant groups most influential among Iraq's Shiite majority, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Dawa Party. Thousands of their supporters turned out in the streets on nearby Nasiriyah to protest against the dominant role being played by the U.S. in shaping post-Saddam Iraq, chanting "Yes to freedom; Yes to Islam; No to America; No to Saddam...
...delegates met in Nasiriyah, the northern city of Mosul reportedly saw up to 12 people killed when a local protest against the governor installed by U.S. forces erupted in violence. Even in Baghdad, a handful of demonstrators gathered for an anti-American demonstration outside the Palestine Hotel, scene of last week's widely televised toppling of Saddam's statue. Further north in Kirkuk, forced expulsion of Arab Iraqis by armed Kurds continued, and near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit heavily armed local tribesmen fought fierce gun battles with marauding groups of Kurdish bandits. And in the southern town...
...Chalabi had been flown into Nasiriyah by the U.S. military during the last week of the war, his Pentagon backers perhaps hoping their man could steal a march on his rivals by taking charge of security arrangements on the ground in cities captured by the coalition. Instead, however, it appears to be the religious structures of the Shiite clergy - with which the U.S. has, at best, an awkward relationship - that have come to the fore, being the only coherent national organizational structure once the war left the Baath Party and the security services in disarray. Shiite Islam, unlike the Sunni...