Sistani wants to meet al-Sadr, fights continue

The fights

The good news is that the Amer­i­cans are still around the sub­urbs of Sadr-City and did not really entered the cen­ter of the city yet, al-badeel reported that about 50 Amer­i­can tanks tried to attack from 3 sides but the fight­ers man­aged to destroy 5 tanks, three tanks near Jamila Mar­ket [which means that the fights are still at same place for 4–5 days], two tanks at the Sadr-City bor­ders with Ur neighborhood.

The fight­ers man­aged to force the Amer­i­cans to with­draw behind the Army Canal [see maps, Ur neigh­bor­hood, Army Canal, the green line with streets on both sides]

al-Sadr returns

News­pa­per Al-Qabas own sources con­firm the return of Muq­tada al-Sadr to Najaf three days ago after Iran asked to take a deci­sion about the recent splits between sup­port­ers and opposers of “dis­band and dis­ar­ma­ment of Mahdi Army”, espe­cially in Sadr-City.

The inter­est­ing part about the report is:

The Sadrists feel the grow­ing polit­i­cal iso­la­tion and the need to invest in David Petraeus’ recent com­ments:

I think the way, the best way to char­ac­ter­ize Muq­tada al-Sadr is that he is the face and the lead­er­ship of a very impor­tant and legit­i­mate polit­i­cal move­ment in Iraq.

Sis­tani and al-Sadr

Accord­ing Awan, al-Sistani wants to meet al-Sadr in pri­vate to dis­cus the dis­band­ing of Mahdi Army, Sis­tani don’t want to meet al-Sadr’s rep­re­sen­ta­tives or spokesman or any­body on behalf of al-Sadr.

[This is the same sce­nario from 2004’s meet­ing]