Word: basra
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...ites and Kurds. That was a fair criticism until November 2006, when the Sadrists, too, began a boycott of Mailiki's government because the Prime Minister refused to press for an American withdrawal. Tensions between the two formerly allied Shi'ite factions built until open clashes erupted in Basra in March, when Iraqi forces attacked Mahdi Army havens there. The move sparked months of fighting that spread across southern Iraq and Baghdad - and offered Maliki a chance to prove his political critics wrong...
...agenda tactically and politically despite the most serious challenge his power the Iraqi government could muster. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki set out to break the back of the Mahdi Army in March, when he launched an offensive against areas the militia controls in the southern city of Basra. The Mahdi Army fought Iraqi forces to a standstill there while unleashing a daily hail of rockets and mortars on the Green Zone that left al-Maliki's government effectively the ones under siege. And when U.S. and Iraqi troops tried to press into Sadr City to chase the militia...
...long this new cease-fire will last is uncertain. Al-Sadr declared a cease-fire unilaterally last year only to see al-Maliki ignore it with the initial strike in Basra. But one thing is clear: the latest pause in the running fight between al-Sadr and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government offers no visible solutions to the problems at the root of the conflict. Al-Maliki wants to disband the Mahdi Army, or at least de-fang it, before provincial elections in the fall. The bloody nose the Mahdi Army gave al-Maliki in the latest crisis shows...
What Crocker didn't talk about was Iran - and its plans for Iraq's oil. Months before retaking Basra, the Iraqi government started talks with Iran about running an oil pipeline to Abadan, Iran's main export terminal. Iran also has said that it will have a say in Iraq's mega field Majnun, which may contain 30 billion barrels of oil - a rival to Saudi Arabia's larger field. I suspect, though, if he'd been asked about Iran, Crocker would have said it is simply one more reason we should stay in Iraq, to keep Iran...
Crocker could be right. We have no idea what is on the mind of the populist Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. If Sadr were allowed control of the Basra oil terminal, would he shut down Iraq's oil exports? Shell Kuwaiti fields...