Word: basra
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...crackdown on the Mahdi Army, led by popular radical Shi'ite cleric and opposition leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched the campaign last month under the banner of "imposing the law" and wresting control away from militias operating "outside the law." Similar campaigns in Basra, the chaotic port 100 miles away, and Sadr City, the huge Baghdad slum, initially met fierce resistance from al-Sadr's followers, but the cleric ordered his fighters to stand down in the Amara operation, allowing it to proceed peacefully. "The previous operation that happened in Basra really hurt the fighters...
Indeed, despite a low profile, Harbia says the support provided by the U.S. forces has been a key component in Amara's success. And having learned their lesson from Basra and Sadr City, Harbia says, the Mahdi Army is now on the run, and Iraqi forces are using the campaign to pave the way for smoother provincial elections in October - or as members of the Sadrist movement allege, to weaken support for Sadrist-allied candidates ahead of the elections...
...operation was to create the atmosphere for proper provincial elections. One of the goals is to make the election go smoothly," says Harbia. "Now with the outstanding position of al-Maliki in Basra, Amara, Mosul and Sadr City, people are looking to him as an honest and nationalist man." And are Maliki's rivals in the Mahdi Army weaker now than they were a month ago? "This is for certain," Harbia says. "They are outside...
...explosion to happen at any time." He thinks the Amara campaign is a sham. "They announced [Amara] a week before [it happened], so all members of the [radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's] Mahdi Army left. After a month they could come back, and likewise in Mosul and Basra...
...mainly Shi'a units demonstrated a loyalty to secularist ideals during the Sadr Uprising instigated by the Mahdi Army that engulfed several cities in late March. While many Iraqi soldiers in Basra and Baghdad either refused to take up arms against other Shi'as or even handed over their weapons to them, General Ali's soldiers in Mahmudiya, the largest city in the area, stuck through five days of heavy fighting that killed five Iraqi soldiers and 25 insurgents. Ali threw approximately 1,000 Iraqi soldiers into the battle, devised and directed their missions to clear the city, and visited...