I’m late in linking to this:
BAGHDAD – The powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr publicly ordered his huge militia Wednesday to “freeze” operations for up to six months.
But U.S. and Iraqi officials expressed skepticism of the fiery, anti-American cleric’s intentions and his ability to control the fractured network of fighters who kill in his name.
Al-Sadr issued his order following a day of Shiite-against-Shiite gunfire that killed 49 people during a religious ceremony in the holy city of Karbala. In a statement, he said the freeze would apply to his Mahdi Army militia “without exception in order to have it restructured in a way that would retain for this ideological body its prestige.”
It’s hard not to see this as a turning point and evidence of the success of General Patreus’s surge.
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