Word: diwaniyah
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...death of a Polish soldier in the southern city of Diwaniyah Friday was a reminder that militants will still find ways to strike - and that Americans aren't their only targets...
...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...
...militants' tactics in Diwaniyah would be familiar to the British. After months of sustained mortar and rocket attacks on their Basra camps, the British essentially declared victory and slipped out of Basra in the night, pulling back to the regional airport and washing their hands of the Shi'ite infighting that has made Iraq's second largest city ungovernable. British Defense Secretary Des Browne announced Wednesday in Baghdad that the British would hand the Basra region over to Iraqi security forces by mid-December, leaving the city to Iraqi forces that are deeply infiltrated by three warring Shi'ite factions...
...Imam Hussein, the central figure of Shi'a Islam. The group claimed responsibility for the recent attack on the Polish ambassador in Baghdad, a coordinated ambush that included a series of timed explosions and pre-planned gunfire that wounded the ambassador and killed one of his security guards. In Diwaniyah, locals say these armed groups may focus their attention on the local Polish base in the city in an effort to push the Coalition out of the city. That's just what the militias did with the British in Basra, leaving the city up for grabs...
Although the two groups recently pledged to work together in an accord signed by Sadr and SIIC leader Abdul Aziz al Hakim two weeks ago in Iran, the power grab plays out daily on the streets of southern cities such as Diwaniyah. "What's happening in this town is like a political duel over who's going to govern," said Ali al Mayali, a Sadrist member of the Iraqi Parliament. "It's a fight to control the street." Fueling that fight, Mayali said, is money and other support from neighboring countries. He would not point fingers. While U.S. officials point...