Word: karbala
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Many soldiers sensed a changed mood when they arrived at the Iraqi police headquarters in Karbala on Jan. 14. Some of the Iraqis the soldiers had been working with since the fall seemed unusually tense. One Iraqi police officer heckled some soldiers at the back gate in broken English, saying "U.S.A. bad, Iraq good" before throwing bread at them. Another aired an ominous warning. "Tomorrow," he said to soldiers standing guard outside, pounding a fist into his palm. "Tomorrow...
...forces had. Nicknamed "the Wolf," he made a name for himself in Mosul in 2004 and '05, often appearing on an Iraqi true-crime television show called In the Hands of Justice, chasing down and personally interrogating militants. The Americans hoped al-Quraishy, who took over leadership of the Karbala police in the fall of 2006, could stand up to the Mahdi Army in southern Iraq. But Diaz and others believed that, at the least, some of al-Quraishy's police had let the Jan. 20 attackers into the main building without offering any resistance. During the fighting inside, none...
...Karbala attack came days after the U.S.'s Jan. 11 arrest of five alleged Iranian operatives in Irbil, in northern Iraq. Military officials have theorized that the Karbala attack was orchestrated by Tehran in retaliation. But the U.S.'s initial probe of the incident found no evidence of direct Iranian involvement. Instead, the picture that emerged cast suspicion chiefly on senior Iraqi officials known to the Americans, as well as local thugs and associates of al-Sadr. The report on the investigation, which has been released only to the families of the soldiers who were killed, found that...
...military has begun to identify militants thought to have taken part in the attack. On March 22, the U.S. military announced the arrest of Qais Khazali and his brother Laith, saying the two were apprehended in Basra and Hillah for allegedly playing a role in the Karbala attack. Khazali was a protégé of al-Sadr's in 2004 and '05, but his relationship to al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army is unclear these days. Investigators who questioned Khazali say he was working closely with the Iran-backed Quds Force before his capture and was leading a group...
...that the full story? The gunmen who arrived at the Karbala center were obviously skilled guerrillas, and it is certainly possible that some among them had come from as far away as Lebanon or Iran. But that does not explain whether any of the Iraqi officers at the center knew the killers were coming or whether any joined the attack or helped the kidnappers get away. The Americans interviewed by TIME say at least some Iraqi police at the center were involved, and the conclusions of the military investigation support that view. But neither U.S. nor Iraqi authorities have brought...