Iraq’s most vocally anti-American cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, has banned his followers from taking jobs with foreign oil companies operating in the country’s south, the Wall Street Journal reports. A Sadr spokesman said the religious ruling, or fatwa, issued last week could be lifted only after a foreign company’s Iraq operations are vetted for “legitimacy.”

Several international oil-services contractors have set up shop in southern Iraq since the Iraqi government auctioned off rights to rehabilitate oil fields.

A Sadrist member of parliament has called for an independent audit of those government contracts. A spokesman for one government-owned oil company called the fatwa “a loss for the Iraqi citizen” because foreign firms could simply import laborers.



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