Word: mahdi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...steps onto the streets of Baghdad's Shi'ite slum Sadr City, Saed Salah chambers a round into his pistol and shoves it into the back of his pants. A mid-ranking commander in the Mahdi Army, one of the most potent of the armed militias that have carved Baghdad into fiefdoms, Saed Salah has little to fear from the authorities. The whole neighborhood knows who he is. Motorists are aware that his fighters man the makeshift checkpoints that dot the neighborhood. Even though he has attacked U.S. troops countless times, no one will touch him. If the G.I.s could...
...campaign against Jaafari has the backing of both the Kurds and Sunnis, who believe he is either unwilling or unable to rein in Shi'ite militias and would prefer to see the job go to Jaafari's rival for the Shi'ite nomination, Adel Abdel Mahdi of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq . It's not as if Jaafari was even the unanimous choice of the Shi'ite bloc - he won the nomination by only one vote, and then only because of the backing of radical cleric and militia leader Moqtada Sadr. But once the Kurds...
...pretext to start a civil war. Their fears were further fueled in the bloody two days after the attack, when Iraq became a sectarian slaughterhouse. Instead of protecting citizens from each other, National Police units stood by as Shi'ite rioters - and rival militiamen from Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army - stormed Sunni mosques and swarmed over Sunni neighborhoods, according to numerous reports, including some confirmed by U.S. Gen. George Casey, commander of American forces in Iraq...
...success at bringing Sunni political groups into the mainstream, the insurgency rages on. U.S. efforts to exploit splits between foreign jihadist groups and secular, homegrown insurgents have had only limited success. Equally frustrating is the U.S.'s inability to rein in excesses by the Mahdi Army, the Shi'ite militia loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Khalilzad concedes that al-Sadr is "a challenge that has to be dealt with." The preferred option would be for Iraqi security forces to take on al-Sadr's militias. But since the support of al-Sadr's faction is critical...
...ites don't have a majority in the parliament, and in recent days, fissures have appeared in the Shi'ite alliance. But Jaafari is backed by the radical cleric Muqtada Sadr, an unpredictable political maverick with an armed militia, known as the Mahdi Army, that is widely blamed for much of the recent sectarian violence...