Word: iraqi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Insurgent activity persists in eastern and northern Iraq, and almost every day Baghdad still shakes with bomb explosions. Whether this lingering violence will rise as U.S. forces pull out remains the great unknown. Iraqi security forces are more numerous and stronger than they have been since the U.S. military started building them up roughly six years ago, and they may be able to hold back the lingering insurgent movement...
...once fearsome Muqtada al-Sadr has been very quiet lately in Iraq. Political analyst Amir Hassan Fayht says the reason the onetime Iraqi militant shows less and less political muscle is simple. "He gave it up," says Fayht, dean of the college of political science at Baghdad University, "just like that...
Indeed, al-Sadr's once formidable movement appears to be at its nadir, with the cleric himself scarcely a presence in Iraqi politics these days and his political bloc pushed to the sidelines of the provincial elections on Jan. 31. A series of military defeats at the hands of toughened Iraqi security forces plus political missteps over the past year by al-Sadr and his followers have left the future of the mass movement in doubt. And without a solid showing of popular support in the coming vote, the Sadrists appear set to lose what remains of the enormous political...
...have steadily dimmed since last spring, when government forces of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki emerged as the de facto victors in battles with the Mahdi Army across southern Iraq and Baghdad. Weeks of fighting in the early months of 2008 ended in a stalemate. Since then, Iraqi security forces have rounded up scores of Sadrists with the help of U.S. troops, effectively hollowing out the movement's street power and political influence. Meanwhile, the vast popularity that al-Sadr's movement once enjoyed among Iraq's Shi'ites seems to have declined too as Iraqis appear to grow increasingly...
...Even if many Iraqis support his act, he is at the mercy of all kinds of extremists.' MAURO POGGIA, lawyer for Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at President Bush, on why al-Zaidi is seeking asylum in Switzerland...