Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Captain Rahman's story captures, in microcosm, the complex religious and political conflicts that continue to roil the Iraqi security forces even as the country's security situation improves - and the challenges facing the U.S. military in working with them. A former army officer, Rahman joined the new police service after Baghdad fell to coalition forces in 2003. Promoted to captain 11 months ago, he arrived in Haswah with a mandate to retake the city from the Mahdi Army militia of the radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "Every day, the Mahdi Army would kill between...
...Suicide bombers may end their lives in the same way, but it would be foolish to draw any conclusions about their motivations from a single story. Still, how Hasna came to blow herself up sheds some light on the cycle of hopelessness some Iraqi women find themselves...
...Hasna from her sister Sadiya and their mother Shafiqa, who now live in hiding in Syria. (The names of the bomber and her family have been changed at their insistence.) Although aspects of their story are impossible to verify, important details tally with the version of events provided by Iraqi officials in Anbar. (The U.S. military will only confirm that a woman suicide bomber attacked the checkpoint at Kilometer 5 on July 23.) Sadiya and Shafiqa also allowed TIME to view, but not to record, two DVDs given to them by an Al-Qaeda fighter; one is Hasna's last...
...motive, but Hasna was an early, willing casualty of the latest jihadi trend: the use of women on the frontlines of the Holy War. Although fewer than 30 of the nearly 1,000 suicide bombings since the end of the war have been attributed to women, American and Iraqi officials say jihadi groups are deploying female bombers far more frequently to slip past the heavy security cordons that are the backbone of the U.S. military's surge strategy. On Sunday, a female bomber killed 16 people and wounded at least 35 in Baquba. Just a few days before...
...initially skeptical - they had never worked with a woman, and felt certain she would lose her nerve at the last moment. But Hasna wore them down with her insistence, and they sent her to Syria to be vetted by senior jihadi commanders and fitted for a bomb belt. (Iraqi officials in Ramadi say she made several training visits to Syria...