Word: clericalism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...government's position all along has been that it is fighting criminals, not members of the Mahdi Army. So the importance the government has attached to Sadr's announcement undercuts its assertion that it is not engaged in combat with the radical cleric's forces. More importantly, it was not clear that the militia would comply with the government's initial demand that its members surrender their weapons. Sadr's statement simply asked his followers not to appear with their weapons in public, and said that those who did would not be considered Mahdi Army members...
...cleric Moqtada al-Sadr today called for an end to the fighting between his followers and Iraqi forces in the escalating conflict that has engulfed the southern city of Basra. In a statement issued from his headquarters in Najaf, al-Sadr demanded, in return, that the government give his supporters amnesty and release any followers that are being held...
...braced against mounting chaos in the capital and in the south of the country. The Iraqi government has placed the city under a curfew, banning all civilian vehicle use, until Sunday morning. The south of Iraq, where heavy fighting between Iraqi forces and militias loyal to powerful Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has raged since Tuesday, is also under curfew. Over one hundred people are reported to have been killed, and hundreds more injured, as Iraqi forces led by Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki struggle to take control of the city...
...Baghdad and it may end badly. The U.S. military has been very careful to say that the current offensive by the Iraqi government in southern Iraq was simply "enforcement of the law in Basra." It was not directed against the Mahdi Army, the militia run by radical Shi'ite cleric (and political powerhouse) Moqtada al-Sadr, whose seven-month-old cease-fire has been key to the success of the American surge. The U.S. maintained that line today even though it was clear that the "criminal gangs" battling government forces in Basra were identifiable as elements of the Mahdi Army...
Thursday also marked the third day of escalated fighting in other sections of the city, spurred by the launch of an Iraqi military operation against armed militants - many of them supporters of powerful Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr - in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites massed in three districts of Baghdad, including Sadr City - the notoriously dangerous slum and stronghold of Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army - to protest the offensive in Basra. One group of demonstrators in Khadamiya district carried a coffin with a photo of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's face...