Free Republic

A series of truces agreed on last month, encompassing Mr Sadr's stronghold in al-Thoura, Baghdad's eastern slum, as well as the Shia holy cities and other towns further south, are still holding. His own home turf in the capital has been more peaceful than it has been for months. Former fighters are now being paid to collect rubbish, plant trees, direct traffic and help the Iraqi police. The new government has promised to pay for a new sewage system so that the slum detritus will no longer flow past Baghdad's grimmest tenements. Outside the city, the clergy behind Mr...

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The name of Saddam Hussein has been removed from the list of descendants of Islam's Prophet Mohammed, the head of the union of Ashrafs, who guard the genealogical tree, told AFP. Al-Sherif Najeh Mohammed Hassan al-Faham al-Aaraji admitted that the ousted dictator had been able to cheat despite the great value and honour attached to the line which is guarded in Baghdad. "Saddam had forced the origin experts to falsify his genealogical tree so that it went back to the Prophet," he said. "We will inform all the experts, and particularly those who yielded to Saddam and...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 25 — A religious edict issued in Iran and distributed to Shiite mullahs in Iraq calls on them "to seize the first possible opportunity to fill the power vacuum in the administration of Iraqi cities." The edict, or fatwa, issued on April 8 by Kadhem al-Husseini al-Haeri, an Iraqi-born cleric based in the Iranian holy city of Qum, suggests that Shiite clerics in Iraq are receiving significant direction from Iran as they try to assert the power of Iraq's long-oppressed religious majority. It is not yet clear how much popular support Mr. Haeri and other clerics emerging...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's American-backed administration failed in its first week to choose a president, abandoning that mission in favor of a weak, three-man rotating leadership. The top U.S. official in Iraq — who hand-picked the Governing Council — returned to Washington while a violent insurgency killed yet another American soldier Saturday. The council, agonizingly shepherded into existence by L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, was announced last Sunday, saying its first order of business was the election of a president. When that did not happen after six days in session, officials of the Iraqi government told The...

Cleric Calls for 'Islamic Army' U.S. Authority Challenged by Shiite Leader By Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, July 19, 2003; Page A12 BAGHDAD, July 18 -- A leading Shiite Muslim cleric today issued a sharp challenge to American authority and the U.S.-backed Iraqi leadership, announcing plans to form an independent "Islamic army" and denouncing the Iraqi Governing Council as an "illegitimate" body of American "lackeys." Moqtada Sadr, the 30-year-old activist who heads one of Iraq's major Shiite movements, did not spell out his reasons for raising such an army, nor did he expressly call for the overthrow of...

Parties, plunder, and prayer in liberated Baghdad Matthew Gutman May. 5, 2003 In Sadr City, the lawless and impoverished district in east Baghdad formerly known as Saddam City, the US has found a friend. The Shi'ite residents and their powerful clerics have thrown their support behind American troops, grateful that they rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein and hopeful that the US might drag them out of dire poverty. "We were the living dead under Saddam," said Said Fathen al-Yasser, a metal trader who specializes in pillaged Iraqi tank and artillery shells. "Now we are free. For the first time...