Word: ites
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...there are also signs that the Iraqi Prime Minister may be seriously veering from his past alignment with the U.S. Waving the stick of a timetable at the U.S. shores up his increasingly positive standing among his countrymen, one that has improved ever since March, when the Shi'ite Prime Minister led a series of bold military offensives to "impose the law" in chaotic militia-dominated cities across the country. Those actions have dispelled sentiments shared by many Iraqis that his administration is weak. "[Maliki] is very strong. He made a decision to bring back security...
...Maliki may indeed be showing his true colors. Last month Iraq's speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadanni, predicted this shift in the government's negotiating stance with the U.S. "[Maliki's] Shi'ite coalition is publicly with the [SOFA] agreement but secretly against it," says al-Mashhadanni. "They came to power because of an agreement with the multinational forces, and they [have to] thank them for that. But the [long-term] presence of the multinational force will affect their [popular, nationalist] position." (Al-Mashhadanni's own party, the Sunni Tawafuq bloc, has the reverse problem; according to al-Mashhadanni...
...Amara, the capital of Iraq's unruly Maysan province - long a smuggling hub for weapons and drugs on Iraq's border with Iran - Iraqi forces are waging a crackdown on the Mahdi Army, led by popular radical Shi'ite cleric and opposition leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched the campaign last month under the banner of "imposing the law" and wresting control away from militias operating "outside the law." Similar campaigns in Basra, the chaotic port 100 miles away, and Sadr City, the huge Baghdad slum, initially met fierce resistance from al-Sadr's followers...
...militia. On Friday morning, he led a convoy of four police trucks into downtown Amara, their sirens breaking up traffic as they sped down a packed central-market street. The day's mission: to arrest two men whom he said have been linked by a court to intra-Shi'ite revenge killings. Down a side alley, the trucks ground to a halt and the police stormed a small concrete house, arresting a young...
...Iraq as the war enters its sixth summer. While the GAO doesn't contradict a Pentagon report that indicates violence in Iraq has dropped significantly, it claims the improvement is based on a 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...