SADR WALKS

Since early April, U.S. com­man­ders in Iraq have been vow­ing to “kill or cap­ture” the rene­gade cleric Moqtada al-​​Sadr. Now, they appear to be back­ing off of that promise.
The Times is report­ing that American forces and Sadr’s gueril­las have struck a deal to end the fight­ing in the holy cities of Najaf and Kufa.

The agree­ment, ham­mered out between Mr. Sadr and Iraqi lead­ers and approved by the Americans, calls for [Sadr’s] Mahdi Army, whose fight­ers have held the city since April 5, to put away their guns and go home, and for the American forces to pull most of their forces out of the city. Under the agree­ment, the Americans can main­tain a hand­ful of posts inside the city and may still run patrols through the city cen­ter…
In a major con­ces­sion to Mr. Sadr, the Americans and Iraqi offi­cials promised to sus­pend the arrest war­rant issued against him for his sus­pected involve­ment in the mur­der of a rival cleric in April 2003…
In a news con­fer­ence today, the Americans and the Iraqis said Mr. Sadr’s fate was open to nego­ti­a­tion. Some Shiite lead­ers said plans were in the works to offer Mr. Sadr or peo­ple around him posi­tions in the new gov­ern­ment, sched­uled to take over when the Americans trans­fer sov­er­eignty here on June 30. (empha­sis mine) 

May 27th, 2004 | War Update | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.