Word: iraqi
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...when Maliki and Sadr, for whom Sadr City has long been a political stronghold, struck a peace agreement in mid-May, the situation took a turn for the better. Under the deal, Iraqi forces were allowed to enter the district to pursue wanted criminals, so long as they abstained from "random" arrests, and the U.S. military stayed on the outskirts. In return, Sadr asked his Mahdi Army to lay down their weapons...
...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 the family's insistence.) Although aspects of their story are impossible to verify, important details tally with the version of events provided by Iraqi officials in Anbar and by the U.S. military. Sadiya and Shafiqa also allowed TIME to view but not record two video CDS given them by an al-Qaeda fighter. One is Hasna's last statement; the other is a recording of her suicide mission. The picture that emerges...
Religion may not have been her motive, but Hasna was an early, willing casualty of the latest jihadi trend: the use of women on the front lines of the holy war. 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. There have been 21 female suicide attacks so far this year, up from just eight in all of 2007. As sectarian violence has plummeted and a semblance of normality has returned to Iraq, the use of women...
...they do it? 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, worn down by so many years of tyranny and war, find themselves...
...rickety foundation provided by the now slowing U.S. troop surge, a creaky cease-fire with Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and a U.S.-led effort to recruit former insurgents for policing--not on any sustained reforms needed for lasting peace. The GAO says that only 10% of Iraqi army battalions have reached operational readiness, a claim the Pentagon calls "misleading." The Pentagon also criticizes the GAO for relying on "outdated" infrastructure benchmarks that, it says, don't reflect recent progress. Nonetheless, the study is sure to be cited by Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama to support his stance that...