Word: mahdi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...either to the Shi'ite mobs that rampaged unchecked through the streets of Baghdad several times last year or to reprisal killings by Sunni insurgents. The Awadis were lucky: they had fair warning. Adnan still remembers the strong body odor of the six armed men from the Shi'ite Mahdi Army militia who walked into his office at the Health Ministry and demanded that he quit his job and get out of the country. Said the leader of the group: "We are cleaning the government, throwing out Sunni garbage like you." He told Adnan what would happen if he didn...
...attempted to establish a constant presence in Baghdad's neighborhoods, local insurgents and militia groups pushed back. In 9 Nisan, Sauer's troops sought to demonstrate to residents that they and the Iraqi government, not the militia, controlled the streets. But local militants loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army would not give up their turf without a fight. "It was a contest of wills," Freeman says. "We just kept coming at them, and going out there, and getting into the neighborhood...
...just an attempt to wait out the U.S. military, which will begin drawing down its numbers in the next few months. After suffering heavy losses in pitched battles in 2004, the militia has sought to avoid open confrontations with U.S. forces. The Americans must eventually leave and the Mahdi Army will remain in some form. Still, says Sauer, "Every day that goes by without violence is a win" - a window of opportunity for American troops and their Iraqi allies to weaken the militia's grip on Baghdad's neighborhoods...
...American invasion The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) - known until May 2007 as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI - has clashed, often violently, with followers of the Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. This summer Sadr announced a "freeze" in the activities of his Mahdi Army militia and the two sides have reached an uneasy truce. But residents in Najaf say the rivalry has simply gone underground. "The relationship between the two sides in the media is the opposite of reality," says a history professor who teaches near Najaf (concerned for his safety, he asked...
...which killed a member of his security detail and wounded the ambassador and three others. Military officials said they believed that attack was the work of a Shi'ite militant group known as the Battalions of Hussein, a splinter group of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army. The same group made life difficult for British Forces in Basra and has recently shown up in Diwaniyah, claiming responsibility for mortar and rocket attacks and dropping leaflets in neighborhoods surrounding two joint Polish-Iraqi outposts, warning residents to flee coming attacks...