Word: baghdads
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Despite a recent spate of bombings in Baghdad, Iraqi and U.S. officials continue to stress that the city is safer now than it has been in years. But what does safe mean in a country torn by more than half a decade of violence? A look at available data on killings in Baghdad and other world metropolises reveals some surprises...
Three previous trials have established this much: on March 12, 2006, a small group of junior soldiers slipped away unnoticed from a lightly defended traffic checkpoint just outside the insurgent-infested town of Yusufiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad. Nursing a hatred of Iraqis stemming from heavy losses their unit had suffered, and fueled by several bottles of Iraqi whisky, they embarked upon a premeditated crime of gruesome barbarity. Donning black long-underwear outfits as disguises, even though it was the middle of the day, they traveled a few hundred meters to an isolated farmhouse where they gang-raped Abeer...
...near term, the Mahdi Army does not look poised to reassert itself in Baghdad or elsewhere in Iraq, despite what looks to be a rise in sectarian attacks directed against Shi'ites. But the political and security dynamics dampening a Mahdi Army comeback today could change drastically in the coming months as U.S. forces fade from the streets of major cities across Iraq as part of a U.S.-Iraqi agreement calling for American troops to be off the streets of urban areas by June. U.S. military officials have warned that sectarian violence is likely to rise as the drawdown goes...
...Should the Mahdi Army return to the streets, Mohsen doubts it could do so with the same strength it showed in past years. Iraqi security forces, with help from U.S. troops, now largely control areas that were once virtually untouchable militia havens such as Sadr City in Baghdad and the port city of Basra in the south of Iraq. The Mahdi Army dispatched gunmen nightly during the height of the sectarian violence. Yet Mohsen believes the odds of such a situation unfolding again are low, at least in Baghdad - given the myriad checkpoints, blast wall cordons and Iraqi security forces...
...addition to increased security in Baghdad, the political environment has changed in ways that may make a resurgent Mahdi Army less welcome than before to average Iraqis. During the worst of the sectarian violence, much of the Sunni community held a completely rejectionist stance toward the Iraqi government and U.S. forces. In the minds of many Iraqis and militiamen and their passive supporters, that left virtually all Sunni communities complicit in insurgent violence and therefore fair game for bloody reprisal attacks like the bombings Thursday and Friday. But today, many key Sunni factions work with the government and U.S. forces...