Word: mahdi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...very successfully, with the Shi'ite majority. According to Crocker, tribes aren't as important among the Shi'ites, who tend to organize themselves in larger structures, especially around two dominant political families, the Sadrs and the Hakims. Each family has a militia. The Sadrs have the Mahdi Army, and the Hakims have the Badr Corps, and these two forces are now at war with each other in southern Iraq. In recent weeks, Hakim-leaning governors of two provinces were assassinated, most likely by special units associated with the Mahdi Army...
...resume participation in the government, called an emergency political summit. Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, one of the last prominent Sunni figures willing to be seen talking to the Shi'ite Maliki, was summoned. So was Kurdish President Jalal Talabani and Shi'ite Vice President Adel Abdel Mahdi as well as Massoud Barzani, president of the northern Kurdish region...
Wednesday's raid in Sadr City targeting a so-called "secret cell" of Moqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army was a reminder that even as they press their campaign against al-Qaeda aligned Sunni militants, U.S. forces are ramping up operations against what they see as a more serious long-term threat: Shi'ite militias supported by Iran. The attack killed, by the U.S. military's count, 30 men allegedly involved in receiving weapons and training from Iran. Attacks of that scale in the militia's stronghold are not unheard of, but they are rare. Since the two sides declared...
...Meanwhile the Mahdi Army has ramped up its attacks against American troops and the Iraqi security forces. According to the same U.S. military official, Mahdi Army cells with Iranian backing were responsible for 75% of U.S. and Coalition deaths last month. The Americans contend that the Mahdi Army, which sprang up in 2003 as a nationalist militia opposed to both the U.S. occupation and Iranian interference, has since become heavily influenced by Tehran...
...disapproval of Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated government remains a serious obstacle to any sustained American effort to defang the Mahdi Army. Just as it has done after similar raids in the past, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense said Wednesday that it had no knowledge of the American attack in Sadr City. So, while the military equation may have changed for the Americans, Iraq's political realities have...