Word: mahdy
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...another out to bloodthirsty mobs drag itself back from the brink of civil war? Iraq has done so before. In the summer of 2004, when al-Sadr's fighters battled U.S. forces in several cities, Iraqi leaders warned of a potential Shi'ite insurgency. In the end, the Mahdi Army was cornered, and Sistani ordered the fighters to go home. But taking a beating from an overwhelmingly superior force of foreigners is one thing. It is hard to see either Shi'ites or Sunnis backing down from a more evenly balanced sectarian fight, if only because the burden of history...
...across the region, a remarkable achievement for a politician-cleric who has neither been elected to any office nor completed his religious education. After hearing news of the destruction of the Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, al-Sadr cut his trip short to return to Iraq to marshal his Mahdi Army, a militia of bristling young Shi'ites who had swarmed the streets, torching Sunni mosques and girding for war. But a government-imposed curfew had closed airports and sealed borders, leaving al-Sadr locked out. His mood was surly. An aide told TIME that when he tried to brief...
...first half of 2004, he became a nationalist hero to many Iraqis after leading two armed uprisings against U.S. forces. His Mahdi Army is made up of thousands of poor Shi'ites, the majority of whom live in a densely populated Baghdad suburb that bears al-Sadr's family name. Little more than rabble, the Mahdi Army was no match for U.S. troops, but at least 29 American service members were killed in battles with al-Sadr's forces...
...months since Iraq's general election, he has shown he will be a disruptive figure in the heart of any new government. He scuttled a plan that would have replaced Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari--who is widely distrusted by Sunnis--with the more acceptable Adil Abdul Mahdi, and his refusal to deal with secular politicians like former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has confounded U.S. attempts to nudge the Shi'ites to form a national unity government. "We did our best to bring [al-Sadr] into the political process," says Redha Jawad Taqi, a senior leader of SCIRI, the largest...
...biggest concern for many Iraqis is al-Sadr's unwillingness to disarm the Mahdi Army militia, which has a long record of inflammatory and often criminal behavior. In areas where al-Sadr's fighters hold sway, they use brute force to impose a strict Islamic code. They are frequently accused of kidnapping and assassinating those who resist them. Many Mahdi Army fighters have been absorbed into the Iraqi security forces and police, and in the aftermath of the Samarra bombing, many police vehicles in Baghdad were openly flying Mahdi Army colors--black and green. Sunni groups say policemen did nothing...