Power vacuum remains

ON his return to Iraq following Saddam Hussein’s fall from power, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim was hailed as Iraq’s version of Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian Shiite leader who led his country’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

His assassination further complicates the complex race for power in post-Saddam Iraq, where religious turmoil and wide discontent with the US-led occupation is becoming the norm.

Al-Hakim, 64, returned to Iraq on May 10 after spending more than two decades in exile in neighbouring Iran.