Word: mahdy
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Capt. Erik Peterson knows fighters from the Mahdi Army militia of Moqtada al-Sadr are all around, even though he can't see them. Peterson and his men usually catch only glimpses of the Mahdi Army while on the streets of Ghazaliya, a sprawling neighborhood in western Baghdad where Shi'ite militants are pressing a campaign to drive out Sunnis. Acting on neighborhood tips, Peterson's men search suspected Mahdi Army safe houses, which often have a green ribbon hanging on the front door. Sometimes the signs are even more obvious. One house thought to be a Mahdi Army fighting...
...Cartee doubts the Sunni families barricading themselves in his sector can hold out much longer. Shi'ite militants thought to be from the Mahdi Army have mounted an aggressive campaign since this summer to clear Sunnis from the northern end of Ghazaliya, a formerly posh neighborhood in western Baghdad. The cleansing push has moved steadily southward, gaining ground house by house, day by day. Cartee says Mahdi Army fighters typically give Sunni families they threaten in Ghazaliya just 24 hours to leave their homes, which are then handed to Shi'ite families. Anyone who defies the deadline risks death...
...long ago, Hamed was a businessman who spent days tending to his various shops. Now Hamed's afternoons go to checking on the Sunni families crowded into the houses around his. Often at night he joins the neighborhood lookouts keeping watch on rooftops, eyeing the newly claimed Mahdi Army territory that sits literally across the street. "The situation is too much to bear," says Hamed, who wraps himself in a long brown robe lined with faux fur as he walks the neighborhood compound. "If the Americans cannot do something to help us, we're going to make our own army...
...hour I spent with him, and he says bullets fly into the neighborhood almost daily. Cartee visits Hamed frequently, always urging him not to take matters into his own hands. U.S. troops try to help Hamed by keeping up patrols in the area and raiding safe houses of the Mahdi Army - which denies any operations in Ghazaliya. But the U.S. raids often come to nothing. Shi'ite militants have a knack for disappearing before U.S. forces can nab them. And the U.S. patrols aren't omnipresent. Much of the time the sheik...
...Sadr City had been Chiarelli's showcase of soft power. As commander of the 1st Cavalry, he had ordered "public works" like new sewage systems and improved water supplies to deal with ingrained grievances. That did nothing to stem the Mahdi Army's power. Now, though it can be seen as a place where increased U.S. troop presence can make a difference, the tense standoff between U.S forces and the Mahdi Army could easily erupt into open fighting and turn Baghdad into an urban battleground. Still, as a long as the uneasy prevailing peace remains, American troops exercise a broad...