Word: ites
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...AUDIO: The Iraqi prime minister has shown once again that he is not willing to crack down seriously on the Shi'ite militias - which means U.S. and Iraqi soldiers are wasting their time and risking their lives
...Baghdad, this has become a familiar Green Zone farce. Beholden to the very militias he has vowed to crush, the increasingly hamstrung prime minister has forced U.S. troops guarding the city to don kid gloves when dealing with the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to the radical Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, which has been blamed for much of the sectarian violence that kills an average of 100 Iraqis a day. And there is palpable frustration among U.S. soldiers patrolling the streets of Baghdad that every time they strike against the Mahdi Army, they are publicly scolded...
...Mahdi Army untouchable. Still, few in Baghdad doubt that the Mahdi Army is conducting a campaign of organized violence against Iraq's Sunnis. TIME has uncovered evidence of a Mahdi Army program of ethnic cleansing designed to drive Sunnis out of mixed neighborhoods. As a member of a Shi'ite Islamist party himself, al-Maliki dares not incur the wrath of his own community. The last Iraqi leader who tried to face down al-Sadr, former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, paid a heavy political price - in two general elections following his authorization of U.S. forces to smash the Mahdi Army...
...rather than directly confront the Shi'ite militias, the prime minister tends to deflect the blame for the sectarian violence toward Sunni terrorist organizations. He did it again Wednesday, saying: "The root of the bloody cycle that we are undergoing is the presence of terror organizations that have arrived in the country...
...Khalilzad's statement was motivated by political considerations that had more to do with the American midterm elections due next month than any real deal. " We are not much concerned with it, " he said. The defiance plays well with al-Maliki's political allies: al-Sadr and other Shi'ite Islamists. But it leaves other groups, including Sunnis, Kurds and secular Iraqis - and not a few observers in Washington - wondering whether the prime minister can stop his country from descending into a total sectarian...