Word: militia
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...civilians were killed in October - still a high number, but down well over 50% from late last year. Much of that decline reflects the declining influence of the Sunni terrorist group al-Qaeda in Iraq, and a reduction in sectarian violence. But the tactics of choice for Shi'ite militia groups - rocket and mortar attacks and sophisticated roadside bombings - have also waned...
...American troops attempted to establish a constant presence in Baghdad's neighborhoods, local insurgents and militia groups pushed back. In 9 Nisan, Sauer's troops sought to demonstrate to residents that they and the Iraqi government, not the militia, controlled the streets. But local militants loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army would not give up their turf without a fight. "It was a contest of wills," Freeman says. "We just kept coming at them, and going out there, and getting into the neighborhood...
...this fall the violence has not boiled over again into pitched battles, as it has several times in the past across southern Iraq. But residents in Najaf say militias loyal to SIIC and the Sadrists are engaged in more targeted violence. Aysser Ali, 35, said kidnappings and assassinations are the tactics of choice for now. "I would believe that nobody goes out of his house without thinking that somebody will come and shoot him in the head," Ali says. Still, he says he is hopeful that the public's growing weariness of militia violence will eventually calm the situation...
Discipline and deference to law and order, though, are rarely the strong suit of a militia. And the Sadrists, in particular, have little motivation to genuinely embrace the government. Sadr rose to prominence in 2003 and 2004 as an outsider claiming parties like SIIC did not represent poor and marginalized Shi'ites. After bloody fighting in 2004 he agreed to join the political process, and the Sadrists are power brokers in the national legislature. But they say they are still marginalized in regional governments...
...Sadrists assume that SIIC and its allies will continue postponing provincial elections to deny the Sadrists what they say is their rightful level of representation. Agreements and cease-fires aside, the Sadrists still put less faith in the power of democracy than they do in the power of their militia. "Of course, [because] the Sadrist movement has a base in the street," says Ali al-Mayali, a Sadrist member of parliament. "[It is] a base the other won't have - could never dream of having." In southern Iraq, political disputes are still more likely to be solved in the streets...