Word: cleric
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...ambassador's motorcade in Baghdad, which killed a member of his security detail and wounded the ambassador and three others. Military officials said they believed that attack was the work of a Shi'ite militant group known as the Battalions of Hussein, a splinter group of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army. The same group made life difficult for British Forces in Basra and has recently shown up in Diwaniyah, claiming responsibility for mortar and rocket attacks and dropping leaflets in neighborhoods surrounding two joint Polish-Iraqi outposts, warning residents to flee coming attacks...
...tribal areas, meanwhile, are in the grip of an escalating war of insurgency and counterinsurgency, with recent clashes between militants and government forces leaving more than 100 dead. The army had been sent in to contend with the supporters of a charismatic pro-Taliban cleric bent on establishing Islamic law in the former tourist enclave of Swat, better known for its Buddha sculptures and ancient monasteries than for any kind of religious fundamentalism...
...Sunni and Shi'ite heartlands, respectively. "The governors of those provinces were literally building trenches on their border, and they are now meeting regularly. You had the highest-ranking Sunni politician in the country, Tariq al-Hashemi, go to Najaf to meet with the leading Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani. All of this would have been unthinkable only a few months...
...Province, have calmed down. The local government and security forces of Diwaniyah are largely controlled by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and its armed wing, the Badr Corps, who are challenged almost daily in the streets by members of the rival Jaish al Mahdi, the militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al Sadr. (The SIIC was formerly known as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, with the initials SCIRI.) While both groups are engaged in a raw and bloody fight for dominance in the region, they are also pitted against each other by basic political positions that...
...process. What has surprised military officials about the groups around Musayyib, though, is that they are Shi'ite or of mixed sect, containing both Sunnis and Shi'ite residents who rejected the excesses of the Jaish al Mahdi, the Shi'ite militia nominally loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al Sadr. Almost 500 Shi'ites and at least as many Sunnis have already signed on. Shi'ite communities in the capital of Baghdad are also reportedly growing unhappy with al-Sadr's militia...