Word: mahdi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...loyal Mahdi Army fighter since the Shi'ite militia was established in 2003, Abbas is now wanted by the Iraqi government. But his story echoes those of many of Iraq's young fighters; it's one not of cold-blooded murderers but of avengers. "Al-Qaeda killed my brother. They kidnapped him from a street near his home in 2006. They wrapped his head in plastic until he suffocated to death," he says. "He was 23, and his wife was five months pregnant. Those people [who killed him] were his neighbors - his friends." (Abbas later caught and killed them...
...fight again, because they are too weak now," says an Interior Ministry official. "If they start, it will be their end." Says Ali Saadi, a medical professor in the Hay al-Banook district, where the Shi'ite militia has been popular and which lies adjacent to Sadr City: "The Mahdi Army was hit hard [by the military operation]. They are very weak these days, and a lot of them escaped to other areas...
...mean the government has less control over the restless opposition hotbed than it has claimed? "The government is in full control of Sadr City," says the Interior Ministry official, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the press. "There are still a few [Mahdi Army fighters], but they have no influence and they cannot act because we are fully in control of them...
...Sadrists in parliament maintain their distance when speaking about the militia in public. "Of course the government is controlling Sadr City," says Sadrist MP Nasir al-Saadi. But when asked whether that means the Mahdi Army has been wiped out, he says, "The Army of the Imam [a name used interchangeably with Mahdi Army] is not only in Sadr City; it is in all of Iraq. And if [government officials] think they are few in numbers, they are dreaming...
...focused on the sermon and subsequent political demonstration to pay much mind to the rest of the neighborhood. But police and army checkpoints become noticeably fewer and farther between as one moves from the outskirts to the center of Sadr City. And in the heart of the slum, Mahdi Army fighters in yellow shirts operate checkpoints alongside Iraqi soldiers. "But it's not cooperation," laughs Mohanid, a Mahdi Army fighter. Most of the Iraqi soldiers have their faces covered to conceal their identities. At another intersection, a dozen young militia members attempt to direct a snarl of traffic...