An upsurge of armed resistance to the U.S. occupation has swept across Iraq over the past six weeks. Most of the fighting was initially concentrated in the southern port city of Basra, and then in the densely populated Sadr City, an impoverished suburb of the capitol Baghdad. The fighting in Basra and Sadr City is significant in that it represents a decisive rejection by the masses of Iraqi Shiites of the occupation government’s ‘political process.’