Sistani has returned to Najaf. This is huge.

Can Sistani save the situation?
by Helena Cobban

This is the best news I could imagine from Iraq. It's a Reuters report from Michael Georgy in Najaf, saying that Ayatollah Sistani had already reached Basra from Kuwait in a ground convoy... And Sistani's asking all Iraqis to join him in a march to Najaf. It will be so interesting to see (a) how many thousands of Iraqis do this, (b) whether the march will be nonviolent, and (c) how they arrange the logistics of getting into the city through the US lines. I have seen signs before that Sistani has some interest in the power of nonviolent mass organizing. This project he is launching now could (though we don't know yet) be a major project in this genre.

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Sistani Returns, Launches March
Sadrist Ceasefire Announced
by Juan Cole

Al-Hayat is reporting that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani defied his physicians' advice and insisted on returning to Iraq midday on Wednesday. He landed in Kuwait and went overland to Basra, where he is staying at the home of prominent Shiite Ali Abdul Hakim.

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Sistani in Najaf Today
by Juan Cole

As I write very early Thursday morning, Sistani 's convoy had left Basra on its way to Najaf several hours to the north. Al-Jazeerah says his convoy is being accompanied by Iraqi police.

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Sistani Arrives in Najaf
Dozens Dead in Kufa Mosque Mortar attack
by Juan Cole

Abdul Hussein al-Obeidi of AP reports that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has arrived in Najaf and gone to a house about a mile from the besieged shrine of Ali. He has asked the thousands of marchers with him to wait outside the city.

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Martyrdom or victory for Muqtada

As another inevitable result of the "smoke them out" diplomacy of the Bush administration and Iraqi Premier Riyadh Malawi, untold damage is being done in the Muslim world: US Apache helicopters and AC-130 gunships bombing the vast holy grounds of the Wadi al-Salam cemetery, while the main shopping street leading to the Imam Ali Shrine - as well as most of Najaf's old city - lies in ruins. And in an overlapping graphic display, US forces now also occupy much of the 2-million-strong Sadr City, the vast Shi'ite slum in Baghdad. The Iyad Allawi government has warned Muqtada al-Sadr, who heads the resistance in Najaf, at least three times: surrender, or else. Muqtada's answer, faithful to centuries of Shi'ite martyrdom, cannot be anything but "martyrdom or victory". Muqtada's spokesman in Najaf, Shaikh Ahmad al-Shaibani, still insists he wants a peace agreement - "not an ultimatum". But "peace" is something the former US Central Intelligence Agency asset Allawi simply cannot deliver, because its precondition, for Muqtada, is the US Army leaving Najaf. Muqtada knows that the longevity of the standoff (the most recent one began on August 5) is directly proportional to his enhanced status as a resistance icon, and Allawi's loss of face. And if the Imam Ali Shrine is stormed, as his Baghdad spokesman Abdel Hadi al-Darraji puts it, there will be "a revolution all over Iraq".

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