Word: badr
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Outwardly, the main cities in the south are in the hands of Iraqi authorities answering to the central government in Baghdad. In reality, Karbala, Najaf, Basra and the provinces they sit in are now a struggling ground between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade, a rival Shi'ite militia also though to have links to Iran. American forces remained on the sidelines as the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade waged bloody campaigns against one another across southern Iraq this summer. On August 28, gunmen from the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade battled in the streets of Karbala...
...birth of a revered 9th century imam. Gunmen from radical cleric Moqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army were operating as a security force for the pilgrims, whose periodic marches to Shi'ite shrines attract attacks from Sunni insurgents. Once in the city, though, the militia clashed with gunmen of the Badr Organization, the armed wing of the rival Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC...
...Violence escalated Tuesday, with Mahdi Army fighters scattered amongst angry crowds firing assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at Badr militiamen. That fighting reportedly began with Mahdi Army attacks on the local police. But in Karbala, as in many cities in southern Iraq, the local police are simply uniformed members of the local militia...
...fighting continued, Karbala was put under curfew, pilgrims were ordered to leave the city, and Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki ordered in government troops to restore order. But fighting between Badr and the Mahdi Army broke out in other Shi'ite cities and in Shi'ite neighborhoods of Baghdad. The death toll, which already reaches into the dozens, is expected to rise as more bodies are recovered in Karbala...
...majority. According to Crocker, tribes aren't as important among the Shi'ites, who tend to organize themselves in larger structures, especially around two dominant political families, the Sadrs and the Hakims. Each family has a militia. The Sadrs have the Mahdi Army, and the Hakims have the Badr Corps, and these two forces are now at war with each other in southern Iraq. In recent weeks, Hakim-leaning governors of two provinces were assassinated, most likely by special units associated with the Mahdi Army...