Word: mahdi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...them meaningless, or else simply stall. Al-Maliki is plainly hedging his bets, acceding to U.S. demands but at the same time cushioning Shi'ite militias from Coalition attack; he has even reportedly gone so far as to purge Iraqi military officers for being too aggressive in pursuing the Mahdi Army of his key ally, Moqtada al-Sadr...
...opening up the government to Iraqis who served in Saddam Hussein's regime, and that the manner in which the former dictator was executed last December was a deliberate provocation of the Sunnis. They say that al-Maliki has done little to dismantle Shi'ite militias such as the Mahdi Army, and suspect that he arranged for its leader, Moqtada Al-Sadr, to take refuge in Iran to escape arrest. Arab officials see the recent dismissal of some officers from the Iraqi armed forces as a purge orchestrated by al-Maliki because they were too aggressive in fighting the Mahdi...
...Mahdi Army is also able to use its political clout to insulate it from the worst effects of the troop surge, by pressuring the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to limit how and where American troops operate in Shi'ite areas. When they feel the heat from the Americans, they are able to make life difficult for al-Maliki by precipitating political crises - as they did this week by announcing the withdrawal of their ministers from his cabinet in protest at his failure to demand a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq...
...While the Mahdi Army's tactical response to the surge has been - with some notable exceptions - to avoid being drawn into head-on fights they can't win against superior U.S. firepower, the Sunni insurgents have responded by redeploying many of their fighters outside of Baghdad in search of softer targets. Spreading their forces, for example to the eastern province of Diyala, makes it necesssary for the U.S. to spread its own forces. The U.S. has reinforced Diyala's capital, Baquba, with a Stryker brigade of some 2,000 to 3,000 men. But with the Army's manpower already...
...Both the Mahdi Army and the Sunni insurgents are working from the classic guerrilla warfare playbook: avoid confrontations with concentrations of better-armed enemy forces; lie low or mount attacks elsewhere to stretch his forces. It's been this way, in one form or another, since the insurgency began in the summer of 2003. And it's a reminder that no matter how thoughtful and well-executed the military strategy is, its effectiveness will be determined by the political reality...