Word: mehdi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...political victory of Sadr's Mehdi army may only be coming into view with the resolution as orchestrated by Sistani. Najaf is in ruins, and while many of the city's residents will blame Sadr for choosing to fight there, there's little doubt that throughout Iraq and the wider Arab world the inclination will be to hold the U.S. responsible. Sadr's message of uncompromising opposition to the American presence in Iraq may resonate even more strongly...
...Sadrists, for their part, demonstrated their capacity to disrupt the peace throughout southern Iraq, and in the capital where they essentially run the vast Shiite slum known as Sadr City, which houses two million people. Mehdi militants confronted Coalition forces in a number of southern Iraqi cities, and at Basra they even managed to take Iraq's oil exports offline. Beside the firefights initiated by his militias, there were also tens of thousands of Iraqis on the streets demonstrating against the U.S.-Allawi offensive by week's end. Particularly worrying to the new government will have been the spectacle...
...latest cease-fire in Najaf may be a telling measure of the political balance of forces in the new Iraq. Having launched an armored offensive into the Shiite holy city after vowing to destroy Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi militia, U.S. commanders abruptly called a halt to offensive operations on Friday as truce negotiations between Sadr and the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi continued. But a new truce wasn't exactly what Allawi and the Americans had in mind when they vowed earlier in the week to finish the fight and break the back of Sadr's forces...
...Even in the face of Sadr's provocations, going on the offensive in Najaf was always a fateful gamble for Allawi. While the estimated 1,000 lightly armed Mehdi militiamen were no match for more than 3,000 U.S. troops and an undisclosed number of Iraqi personnel deployed there, the political circumstances in which the battle was waged forced the Marines to fight with one hand tied behind their backs: Sadr's men were holed up in and around the Imam Ali Mosque, the holiest shrine in the Shiite Muslim tradition, and any damage to the mosque could provoke...
...refusal to withdraw his forces from around the holy sites in Najaf, instead stockpiling weapons there, eventually prompted the government to act. Even if Sadr himself was to be brought into the political process, they reasoned, he could not be allowed to maintain an independent military capability. Destroying the Mehdi army would show Allawi's resolve to brook no insurgent challenges...