Word: mahdi
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...Zaid, a Shi'ite in the Mahdi Army militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr, says he is simply waiting for word on whether to fight again...
...With a series of bombing attacks against Shi'ites leaving at least 150 people dead in recent days, many Iraqis have wondered whether the Mahdi Army will continue to stand down or renew death squad killings as they did when sectarian violence raged out of control for more than a year beginning in 2006. Zaid and others associated with Sadr say that for now the militia is effectively dormant. "The Mahdi Army is off the streets by order of the Sadr himself," says Zaid, who spoke to TIME in Najaf and pointed to a standing unilateral cease-fire declared...
...Iraqi security forces remain wary as they face a potentially restless Mahdi Army while Sunni militants step up attacks at the same time. "We have information that our enemies are re-energizing themselves," said Brigadier General Faisal Malik Mohsen, an Iraqi National Police commander in Baghdad. "That goes for the militias as well as al-Qaeda in Iraq...
...Should the Mahdi Army return to the streets, Mohsen doubts it could do so with the same strength it showed in past years. Iraqi security forces, with help from U.S. troops, now largely control areas that were once virtually untouchable militia havens such as Sadr City in Baghdad and the port city of Basra in the south of Iraq. The Mahdi Army dispatched gunmen nightly during the height of the sectarian violence. Yet Mohsen believes the odds of such a situation unfolding again are low, at least in Baghdad - given the myriad checkpoints, blast wall cordons and Iraqi security forces...
...office did nothing to solve the underlying issue dividing the country: should Lebanon be at the front line in the Arab and Iranian war with Israel, or should it be a Western-oriented nation, accommodated to Israel and focused on trade and tourism? (See pictures of the Mahdi Scouts, the Hizballah youth movement...