The latest Bad News from Iraq: Najaf police led by a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq attacked and razed Moqtada Sadr's headquarters in Najaf. This is a worrying development. Sadr's militia did at least as much damage as the Sunnis when they were active, and putting them on the sidelines was one of the great US victories in Iraq. Pile pissing them off on top of the ongoing Sunni insurgency, the worsening Sunni-Shiite factionalism, and the current constitutional debate's loss of legitimacy, and you have an opening for statewide chaos.
The latest from Reuters (no stable link) is that "Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari appealed for calm in a late-night televised address and condemned an attack on a rival Shi'ite group that sparked clashes in the holy city of Najaf and in Baghdad." Hopefully this will calm things down.
Posted by Warrior Tang at August 24, 2005 07:04 PM