by Sammy Ketz
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug 22 (AFP) - Iraq's CIA-linked premier Iyad Allawi and Moqtada Sadr, the country's most radical Shiite Muslim cleric, are gambling their careers on the battle for Najaf.
Both Shiites yet poles apart, Allawi represents a secular Iraq propped up by the West, and Sadr the country's Iranian-backed religious aristocracy. Both have their supporters and detractors.
Aside from the secular versus the religious, they represent the struggle between the central government and the private armies that mushroomed since former dictator Saddam Hussein was deposed by US-led forces.
Allawi, 58, is a former Baathist turned CIA coup plotter, who the US-led occupation authority hand-picked to head up Iraq's interim government.
Fiercely secular, he is committed to a powerful federal government with a strong military and police.
His goal is to bring security, foreign investment and reconstruction to an Iraq shattered by war and international sanctions.
His nemesis is the young Sadr, the son of assassinated Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr, who stuck out the Saddam years in Iraq and not the luxury of a foreign exile.
The baby-faced cleric wants an Islamic republic like neighbouring Iran.
Shut out of mainstream post-Saddam politics and faced with the reticence of Iraq's leading Shiite cleric Grand Ayaotallah Ali al-Sistani, Sadr has emerged as the focus of anti-US, anti-government Shiite resistance.
"I am an enemy of America and America is my enemy until the day of the last judgement," he has said, professing his willingness to die "a martyr" in the battle against the occupation and its agents.
By speaking up for the disenfranchised and impoverished, he has become Iraq's David to the United States' Goliath.
Despite attempts to bring him back into the fold, Sadr moved into a full-on collision course with Allawi when clashes flared between his Mehdi Army and Iraqi police in the central city of Najaf earlier this month.
Calling in US troops to assist government forces in a bloody military offensive, Allawi demanded Sadr's militia leave the Imam Ali shrine, hand over all its weapons to police and join politics.
The prime minister warned that unless Sadr agreed to his demands on satellite television -- tantamount to political suicide for the cleric -- he would launch a crushing military offensive.
But Sadr slithered out of his grip. As his spokesmen announced Sadr had accepted Allawi's terms, the cleric insisted on handing over the keys to the shrine to the religious authorities and not the government.
Perhaps he foresaw the improbability of a quick conclusion -- Sistani is in London recovering from medical treatment -- and knew that the longer the crisis dragged on the worse it looked for Allawi.
Hiding behind the veil of religion, Sadr also refused to dismantle a militia that he claimed was founded by Imam Mehdi, the 12th imam who Iraq's majority Shiites believe will return one day to earth.
The showdown is not only military but also a game of disinformation.
On Friday, the government said police raided the shrine and arrested hundreds of militiamen. An AFP correspondent at the mosque said police were nowhere to be seen.
On the same day, the health ministry reported 77 killed and 70 wounded during 24 hours of fighting in the city, while Najaf's general hospital put the entire death toll since the fighting began in early August at 52.
Doctors at the shrine's clinic have said that 71 people have been killed and 62 others wounded since then.
Neither has there been any confirmation of claims from militiamen that they have shot down helicopters and destroyed US tanks.