Free Republic

<p>My friends and family back in the states are frustrated because every time Najaf - the city in southern Iraq where my unit has been stationed - is in the news, the reports are of conflict between the U.S. forces and armed militias. To hear the media tell it, America has done nothing to improve the infrastructure or security, and the Iraqi public is volatile and seeking revenge.</p>

<p>BAGHDAD &#8212; A former Ba'ath Party official has confessed to planning the massive car bombing that killed the senior Shi'ite cleric Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and more than 80 others last month, a top Shi'ite security official said.</p> <p>Ayatollah al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), was killed in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf on Aug. 29. The incident has threatened to further divide Iraqi Shi'ites oppressed by former President Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, which was primarily Sunni.</p>

<p>The killing Friday of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim in the holy city of Najaf further complicates the race for power in post-Saddam Iraq, riven by religious turmoil and wide discontent with the U.S.-led occupation.</p> <p>Al-Hakim, 64, was killed in the car bombing of Imam Ali mosque, Shiite Islam's holiest shrine in Iraq. He had returned to his native country May 10 after more than two decades in exile in neighboring Iran.</p>

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq - A bomb exploded outside the house of one of Iraqi's most important Shiite clerics on Sunday, killing three guards and injuring 10 others. The fresh violence comes as the U.S.-led coalition quietly recruits former Iraqi spies to work with American intelligence officials in the country, according to Iraqis.</p>

CNN just mentioned this attack in Najif. I don't know who the guards were...looking for hard copy.

<p>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 an insurgency killed another American soldier Saturday.</p>

Exiled cleric returns home to call for free Islamic stateThousands of Shia Muslims line the road to Basra to greet religious leader who was jailed and tortured by Saddam By Donald Macintyre in Najaf 11 May 2003 The most prominent leader among Iraq's majority Shia Muslims yesterday crossed into the country for the first time after 23 years of exile and told an ecstatic rally of up to 100,000 supporters that Iraq must have a "totally independent" government. The venerated cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim – jailed and tortured in the 1970s for opposing Saddam Hussein – arrived in Basra...

As Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, the 63 years old leader of the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SAIRI) is preparing to leave for his hometown of Najaf, a double conflict is surfacing, pitting senior Iraqi and Iranian Shi’ite leaders and their respective rival religious circles (hawzeh) of Qom in Iran and Najaf in Iraq against each other. Hundreds of Iraqi clerics who had escaped to Iran the inferno Saddam Hoseyn has created for the Shi’as have already left the Iranian religious of Qom, where they were teaching and learning, for their native Iraq, most of them assuring...

Before the start of the campaign to liberate Iraq, pundits and exiles had cast the Shiite community as an almost unconditional ally of the United States. Iraqi Shiites were supposed to be as keen to rise against Saddam Hussein as the so-called "Arab street" was sizzling to explode in his support. In the event, however, there was little or no uprising of the Shiites. Terrorised by Saddam's machinery of fear, the community did not wish to repeat its tragic experience of 1991 when it rose and, abandoned by the US, was crushed by the regime. Less than two weeks after...

An Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite leader said he was ready to work with the United States and the international community to improve the conditions of Iraqis and establish security and stability in his war-torn homeland. But Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer Al Hakim, one of the most powerful voices among Iraq's majority Shiites, said fervent demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims at the holy shrine of Karbala showed Iraqis were able to govern themselves. "There is no doubt we are going to cooperate with all sides and forces that have relations with the Iraqi issue," Hakim said in an interview. "Among these...

WASHINGTON, April 20 (AFP) - US intelligence officials have tracked around 12 Iranian agents moving from Tehran to Al Kut in southeastern Iraq over the past month, according to latest edition of Newsweek out Monday. "We are absolutely 100 percent positive that there are Iranian operatives in town," a senior US military intelligence official told Newsweek, adding that several of them were known members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard. US officials believe that the Iranians in Al Kut, 160 kilometersmiles) southeast of Baghdad are primarily intelligence officers gathering information and possibly spreading propaganda. There are concerned though that Iran appears...

SCIRI: Iraqis eventually seeking an Islamic system April 18 - The Iraqis will eventually seek an Islamic system for governing the country, the deputy head of the Shiite group SCIRI said Friday. “We will first opt for a national political system but eventually the Iraqi people will seek an Islamic republic system,” Abdul-Aziz Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq said in Kut. Talking to the Iran’s state-run television IRIB, Hakim added that the Shiites form more than 60 per cent of the population and their will for an Islamic system would prevail in democratic elections....

The biggest Iraqi Shi'ite opposition group says it will boycott a US-hosted meeting of opposition factions on Tuesday. It also says it will not recognise a US-installed interim administration for Iraq. A senior leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, Abdul Aziz Hakim, told a news conference on Monday his group would not be going to the meeting of US officials and Iraqi political parties opposed to ousted President Saddam Hussein in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. "We will not attend the meeting in Nasiriyah because the Iraqi people won't accept preparations for an administration...

The leader of Iraq's main Shi'ite opposition group, Ayatollah Mohammad-Baqer Hakim, has said he is going to return home after living in exile in neighbouring Iran for more than two decades. He is the head of the Iranian-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, which is believed to have about 15,000 fighters. Since the beginning of the US-led war in Iraq, Washington has repeatedly warned both Ayatollah Hakim's group and their Iranian hosts not to intervene in the war in Iraq. Ayatollah Hakim's spokesman insisted that Iraq was his motherland and he did not need permission to go...

Tehran, April 6, IRNA -- Head of Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) Ayatollah Baqer Hakim will return to Iraq after an hiatus of 23 years, said his nephew Seyed Mohsen Hakim here Sunday. Speaking to IRNA, he said Ayatollah Hakim has made the decision in support of the Iraqi nation in the current difficult crisis. He said another reason for his return is to embark of theological teaching in the Iraq's holy city of Najaf. "The task of guidance and advise to the Iraqi people on national political discourse will enter a new phase with Ayatollah Hakim's...

BACKGROUND ON AYATOLLAH SAYED MOHAMAD BAQIR AL HAKIM (Commentary and editing by James Roger Brown, Director, THE SOCIOLOGY CENTER, thesociologist@aol.com.) This week exiled Shiite Cleric Ayatollah Sayed Mohamad Baqir al Hakim announced plans to return to Iraq to assume a leadership role for Iraqi Shiites which constitute 60% of the population. Ayatollah al Hakim has been in Iran since leaving Iraq in 1980. He was welcomed in Iran by the top Muslim fundamentalists and was an active political ally. Members of the al Hakim family have been popular and powerful Clerics for several generations. A 60 Minutes interview of Ayatollah...