Word: mahdi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Karrada In is buzzing: several new kebab restaurants have sprung up, and many shops have expanded. Karrada Out is the opposite, dark and empty, with most of the shops shuttered. Why? One explanation is that many of the businessmen have fled to Jordan and Syria. Another is that the Mahdi Army, Moqtada al-Sadr's Shi'ite militia, has taken charge of large portions of Karrada, extorting prrotection money from shopkeepers...
...Presidential Council was cast by Vice President Adel Abdul-Medhi whose Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) is the Shi'a power bloc with relatively closer ties to the U.S. than the rival party run by Shi'ite strongman Moqtada al-Sadr, who leads the contentious, trigger-happy Mahdi Army. Abdul-Medhi said that the Provincial Powers law contravened the constitutional right of voters of each province to elect their own governor (a sort of states rights versus federal powers argument, in American constitutional parlance...
...Hanlon is optimistic that the Iraqis can figure it out. "I'm going to hold out hope that the system can fix this," he says, adding that the legislation has a powerful ally. "Sadr believes it's in his interest." Just a week ago, the leader of the Mahdi Army ordered a continuation of a six-month old ceasefire that has been key to recent security improvements in the capital. It's better for everyone if these power sharing arrangements can be negotiated in parliament than on the battlefield...
...Sadr learned in 2004, at great cost to his organization, that open confrontation with U.S. forces is a bad idea. The Mahdi Army fared poorly against U.S. troops in two separate uprisings in southern Iraq that year. In the years that followed, Sadr's militia fighters kept up a kind of shadow war against U.S. troops, staging sporadic guerrilla attacks. But the Mahdi Army has largely avoided confronting U.S. forces for years, and the cease-fire Sadr announced unexpectedly six months ago was not directed at the Americans as much as it was aimed at halting fighting between Sadr...
Leadership figures from the Mahdi Army have long accused government security forces of being under the sway of SIIC, which is led by Sadr's chief political rival Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Until August, the Mahdi Army and the militia wing of al-Hakim's movement, the Badr Brigade, were engaged in a running struggle for influence in southern Iraq, competing for control of everything from gas stations to sacred shrines. The Karbala incident seemed to shock both sides into cooling tensions. But the recent statements suggest the agreement is unraveling. If so, it could draw U.S. troops back into...