Sadr City

Representatives of Iraq's main Shiite Muslim factions signed a deal Monday clearing the way for Iraqi soldiers to operate throughout Sadr City, a vast Baghdad slum that is largely under the control of militiamen loyal to firebrand cleric Muqtada Sadr. The signatures put an official seal to a truce brokered over the weekend by Sadr's political representatives and members of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's governing alliance.

Iran has just defeated the United States in Iraq. The American withdrawal, which comes after the administration's failure to secure a new agreement that would have allowed troops to remain in Iraq, won't be good for ordinary Iraqis or for the region. But it will unquestionably benefit Iran. President Obama's February 2009 speech at Camp Lejeune accurately defined the U.S. goal for Iraq as "an Iraq that is sovereign, stable and self-reliant. " He then outlined how the U.S. would achieve that goal by working "to promote an Iraqi government that is just, representative and accountable, and that provides neither support nor safe haven to terrorists.

A top aide to Muqtada Sadr said Thursday that militiamen loyal to the rebel cleric were willing to hand over their weapons as part of a peace initiative to end fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City slum. But he demanded in return that the fighters not be "persecuted" and that Sadr aides be released from U.S. custody.

Abdullah Saadi fingers the fine brown leather belt with holsters for thimble-sized coffee cups and a dagger. He is a keeper of customs, Baghdad's professional server of coffee. He sits in a brick house behind an iron gate in the cramped warrens of Sadr City. The room is painted bright lemon in contrast to the gray street outside. His mother walks through the room, half-embarrassed, singing for guests, "I am the mother of the coffee maker. " She thumps her chest and laughs at her son. In Iraq, coffee isn't merely a matter of ordering a grande to go from Starbucks.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have moved aggressively in the last week to combat Sunni Arab insurgents in neighborhoods across the capital and to establish a stronger presence in religiously mixed districts long plagued by sectarian violence. But as the new security crackdown enters a second week, they face their most sensitive challenge: whether, when and how to move into the Shiite-dominated slum of Sadr City, stronghold of the Al Mahdi militia.

An unfamiliar sound echoed Saturday on the streets of Sadr City, where gunshots and bomb blasts had rung out for weeks: cars honking their horns. Traffic clogged the Baghdad district's Mudafer Square, which in recent days had been devoid of life except for Iraqi and American Humvees, rooftop snipers and a giant mural of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's late father staring down from a burned-out building.

Hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi troops raided Baghdad's Sadr City slum Wednesday, a day after five British citizens were kidnapped from a nearby government building in an assault that the Iraqi foreign minister said had the hallmarks of a militia strike. Two Iraqis working for the U.S. Embassy were reported kidnapped Wednesday, and at least 48 Iraqis were killed or found slain in other violence. Among them were two journalists. The U.S.

The singing could be heard from more than a block away as the pickup truck careened along the unpaved streets of District 10 deep in the heart of Sadr City. Crammed into the flatbed, 25 mostly young men hoisted their semiautomatic weapons, a few of them carrying rocket-propelled-grenade launchers. Despite a five-day onslaught by U.S.

Rocket attacks killed three American soldiers in Baghdad on Sunday, while fighting between Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and U.S.-led forces paralyzed the capital's Sadr City neighborhood and left up to 22 Iraqis dead. Just hours before the violence erupted, the Iraqi government issued a call for the radical cleric to dissolve his militia. Two U.S. military personnel were killed when rocket fire hit the Green Zone, home to the Iraqi government and the American Embassy.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki ordered U.S. and Iraqi forces Tuesday to remove roadblocks enclosing a vast Shiite Muslim neighborhood that is part of his power base and a suspected source of death squads. Soon after, U.S. forces withdrew from checkpoints that had restricted movement in and around Sadr City since last week, when troops began searching for a missing American soldier and hunting for a death-squad leader.

A senior Iraqi official whose job was to bar former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from the current government was shot dead on a busy street late Thursday, the latest in a wave of assassinations that have sowed panic in the country. Ali Lami, the executive director of the committee that acts as Iraq's anti-Baath Party watchdog, was driving close to Sadr City in eastern Baghdad when a sedan blocked his car and a gunman using a silencer shot him. The bullets hit him in the head, and he died 20 minutes later, according to security officials and Lami's political allies.

A suicide bomber Sunday killed 10 police officers and wounded 19 others who had gathered at the site of a failed car bomb attack on the U.S. military just north of Baghdad, while six people were killed by a wave of bombings in the nation's capital, Iraqi security sources said. A car bomb blew up as a U.S. military convoy passed near Taji, the site of a major military installation north of Baghdad, but caused no damage to the Americans, according to an Iraqi security official. When police gathered by the site, a suicide bomber approached and blew himself up, the security official said.

Mohammad and his gang are back. There may not be a Glock semiautomatic strapped to his waist anymore, but the terrifying mystique of the Mahdi Army still shrouds the Shiite Muslim militiaman like the menacing black uniform he once wore. Civil servant Haidar Naji remembers how Mohammad used to strut around his east Baghdad neighborhood like a mob boss, ordering him not to wear Bermuda shorts, too immodest and Western for his Islamic tastes. Naji changed into longer pants.

Militants launched major bomb attacks in Baghdad and a western province Friday, killing at least 67 people and raising fears that the deaths of the two leaders of Al Qaeda in Iraq would not quell sectarian violence. Bombs ripped through Shiite Muslim sections of Baghdad after Friday prayers and in western Anbar province, where Sunni Muslims first successfully revolted against Al Qaeda in Iraq four years ago. There were no immediate claims of responsibility, although the coordinated bombings bore the hallmarks of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

A cluster of men descends on Hakim Zamili at Friday prayers in Sadr City. The politician, once accused of running death squads out of Iraq's Health Ministry, graciously accepts their embraces, while his bodyguards form a ring around him to prevent him from being crushed. In this Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Baghdad, people cheer Zamili like a conquering hero; outside its blast walls and checkpoints, many revile him. He represents the very paradoxes at the heart of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's movement, which is poised to play a significant role in the selection of the country's next prime minister.

Dozens of mortar rounds thudded across Baghdad on Sunday morning and at least 12 people were killed as Iraqis went to the polls in an election testing the stability of the country's still-fragile democracy. Insurgents had vowed to disrupt the elections -- which they see as validating the Shiite-led government and the U.S. presence -- with violence in order to increase uncertainty over a looming U.S. troop drawdown and widen still jagged sectarian divisions. As the polls opened at 7 a.m., bombs began exploding and mortar rounds landing across the city.

Mahdi Army militiamen brandished Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled-grenade launchers at checkpoints in the Sadr City neighborhood Wednesday, a sight harking back to the days after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq when armed followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr regularly defended the streets. This time, though, they are flexing their muscle against the Shiite-led Iraqi government, rather than providing protection against Sunni Muslim extremists. The 2.

Sadr City residents awoke Tuesday to a sight many had not seen in years: Iraqi soldiers deployed in the deepest reaches of the Baghdad district that is a bastion of militiamen loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr. U.S. and Iraqi officials declared the operation, which took place after talks with Sadr's followers and met with no resistance, a turning point in efforts to restore government authority in areas long controlled by armed factions. But it remains to be seen how Sadr's Mahdi Army militia responds when the Iraqi troops begin searching for weapons and detaining wanted fighters.

The Shiite movement loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr may seem an unlikely standard bearer for democracy in the new Iraq. It owes fealty to a leader whose stature derives from his religious lineage. It boycotted Iraq's first democratic election. And its Mahdi Army militia was held responsible for much of the mayhem that reigned a few years back. But on Friday, the Sadrists held Iraq's first primary election to choose candidates in January's crucial nationwide elections.