Word: mahdi
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Since 2004, American soldiers have treaded lightly in southern Iraq, even though all the territory north of Basra has been ostensibly the responsibility of U.S. forces. An uneasy truce prevailed in the area between U.S. forces and the Mahdi Army, the militia headed by Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Both sides seemed eager to avoid a repeat of the open clashes that erupted in 2004 in Karbala and Najaf, where Sadr's militia holds sway. So U.S. troops generally stayed away...
Outwardly, the main cities in the south are in the hands of Iraqi authorities answering to the central government in Baghdad. In reality, Karbala, Najaf, Basra and the provinces they sit in are now a struggling ground between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade, a rival Shi'ite militia also though to have links to Iran. American forces remained on the sidelines as the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade waged bloody campaigns against one another across southern Iraq this summer. On August 28, gunmen from the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade battled in the streets of Karbala...
...should focus. Will Petraeus propose moving U.S. troops into the restive Shi'ite south? What will he do about Basra, the crucial southern oil port where the British retreat has left slow-motion anarchy, a Shi'ite gang war? What will he do about Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army, the most powerful and popular force in Shi'ite Iraq? The general's own staff is divided on many of these questions. But David Kilcullen, Petraeus' leading counterinsurgency specialist, recently wrote a piece in Small Wars Journal that may reflect the general's current thinking, that the Anbar experiment...
...This seems to be Bush's preference; it's certainly been the neoconservative line. Crocker, however, isn't so sure. In a recent conversation, he said, "We are getting some feelers from southern tribes who are tired of JAM," referring to the Jaish al-Mahdi, the Sadr militia. But, he continued, "tribal identities are stronger among Sunnis." Shi'ites tend to adhere to larger social structures, like the two prominent family dynasties in Shi'ite Iraq-the Sadrs and the Hakims. "It has a lot to do with Shi'ites' traditional underdog status," he said. Actually, Crocker seems constitutionally averse...
...what one senior American military official called a "schizophrenic" policy, Iran offers support both to the Mahdi Army and to SIIC, even as they fight each other. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad added insult to injury this week by observing that the Americans were leaving a power vacuum in Iraq that Iran and other nations would be glad to fill. The Iranian strategy of playing both sides may not be tenable in the long-term, but for now it gives Iran influence in southern Iraq that must be the envy of both the Americans and Iraqi politicians in Baghdad...