Word: mahdi
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...while making it clear that U.S. patience has limits. But no sooner had the U.S. made this declaration than Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki virtually dismissed it. Not only did he reject the notion of timelines, but he scolded the U.S. for attacking commanders of the Shi'ite Mahdi Army in Baghdad. TIME.com asked Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, one of America's foremost experts on Shi'ite politics and culture in Iran and beyond, to explain why Maliki and the U.S. can't seem to stay on the same page...
...orders from Washington. But he also has a serious policy dispute with the U.S., and a sense of betrayal. They promised him, last summer when they launched the major security offensive to retake Baghdad, that the U.S. would take care of Sunni guerrilla movement in Baghdad before moving against Mahdi Army [the Shi'ite militia of Moqtada al-Sadr, whose stronghold is in Baghdad]. That way, Maliki could to go to the Shi'ite elders in Baghdad and say, you are safe, you no longer need militias and they are a source of discord, so they must be disbanded...
...Maliki's outrage over attacks on the Mahdi Army are not a matter of principle; it's about the fact that the U.S. hasn't first done what it said it would do, which was to eliminate the threat of the Sunni insurgents in Baghdad. The reason Shi'ite communities believe they need militias is to protect them from the Sunni guerrillas, which they say the government and the U.S. are not doing. And Maliki can't go and tell them to get rid of their militias while they remain vulnerable to attack by Sunni guerrillas...
...plausible for them to give up their militias entirely. They have, of course, been willing to see those militias incorporated into state institutions - SCIRI's Badr Brigade has been incorporated into the Interior Ministry forces [in whose uniforms they are accused of sectarian killings], while the Mahdi Army has been drawn into the police force in some parts of the country - but they tend to be incorporated in ways that retain their militia identity. The calculation of the U.S. and Maliki last summer was correct: The militias exist because Shi'ites feel insecure. And that feeling of insecurity has been...
...Many Happy Returns, Twelfth Imam! The Mahdi, an imam who happens to be Ahmadinejad's favorite, has become the object of frenzied and government-nurtured worship