THE BARGHOUTI OPTION:

Al-Sadr is back in Iraq, U.S. says (Thomas E. Ricks and Sudarsan Raghavan, 5/25/07, The Washington Post)

Muqtada al-Sadr, the influential Shiite cleric and militia leader who went into hiding before the launch of a U.S.-Iraqi security offensive in February, is in the southern city of Kufa, senior U.S. military commanders said Thursday. [...]

Al-Sadr's movement is wooing Sunni leaders and purging extremists in the cleric's Mahdi Army militia in an attempt to strengthen his image as a nationalist who can lead all Iraqis at a time when anti-war sentiments are growing in the United States and Iraq's political landscape is fractured.

Al-Sadr's apparent re-emergence comes days after his main Shiite rival, the influential cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, went to Iran for treatment of lung cancer. Hakim also is trying to strike a nationalist stance, recently renaming his party from the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to the Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq.

There are growing signs that extremists in al-Sadr's militia are disobeying his orders to stand down, as U.S. troops raid and patrol their strongholds.

After three months of sharp declines, sectarian violence is rising again in Baghdad, a possible indication that Shiite militiamen are resuming reprisal attacks. Al-Sadr's aides have described the cleric's orders as intended to improve his credibility and dispel allegations that the Mahdi Army was fueling sectarian violence.

Note how integral we are to making him credible.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 25, 2007 7:25 AM