Word: ites
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...know if they will last. The massive, U.S.-led security operation in Baghdad has brought some relief. The daily death toll, which had risen to 100 last fall, has dropped. Sunni terrorists continue to kill innocent civilians with car bombs and suicide attacks, but at least the Shi'ite militias have melted away. U.S. military commanders see this as a victory, but few Iraqis are so sanguine. They know that the American soldiers will leave, and worry that the militias are simply waiting them out, regrouping and rearming in the shadows...
...series of bloody attacks on Shi'ite pilgrims traveling through central Iraq has raised the question of whether the Mahdi Army, a powerful Shi'ite militia loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, should be officially allowed to bear arms as a community security force. The Mahdi Army had protected previous pilgrimages, but has also been linked to executions and ethnic cleansing of Sunnis; it recently stood down its men, under pressure from the government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, to avoid clashes with U.S. and Iraqi military forces securing Baghdad...
...press conference last week, Gen. David Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, was asked if the Mahdi Army might have a legitimate role in protecting Shi'ite gatherings. Petraeus seemed to suggest that such a solution might eventually be acceptable to the U.S. "You know, many of... the coalition countries have a variety of auxiliary police or other functions," Petraeus said guardedly. "The challenge, of course, is that some of these organizations have participated in true excesses, and they have been responsible, some of them, some the extremist elements of them - and I think that the challenge has been...
...Petraeus, on the other hand, seemed to be addressing Iraqis and Arabs. Many of Iraq's top leaders have repeatedly said that they view the militias as being a kind of neighborhood watch - with some bad apples who do terrible things. The evidence that some Shi'ite fighters engage in systematic kidnapping, torture and execution of Sunnis suggests that's wishful thinking, but that's what they claim. Petraeus knows this and has to calibrate what he says accordingly...
...Ancient Roots of the Sunni-Shi'ite...