Word: militiaization
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...Iraqis have a substantially different view of the nature of the security problem in their country from the one President Bush outlined. "Coalition forces and the Iraqi people have the same enemies," said President Bush, "the terrorists, illegal militia and Saddam loyalists, who stand between the Iraqi people and their future as a free nation." He suggested that after June 30, "when (Iraqis) patrol the streets of Baghdad or engage radical militias they will be fighting for their own country." But engaging "radical militias" has been very much an American idea, rather than an Iraqi one. So strong was Iraqi...
...Even the most moderate Iraqi politicians have tended to see U.S. military action as part of the problem. President Bush doesn't tell his audience the whole story when he notes, in reference to Sadr's militia, that "ordinary Iraqis have marched in protest against the militants." It is certainly true that the confrontations in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala prompted thousands of Shiites to march demanding that Sadr's Mehdi army withdraw from those cities - but in most cases, those protesters were equally, if not more, insistent that the U.S. troops withdraw...
...credibility of such a government in the eyes of its own people. But somewhere between the two poles are the solutions being developed on the ground by combat commanders - solutions that are often somewhat discordant with the rhetoric out of Washington. President Bush, for example, rails against "illegal militias" and envisages Iraqi security forces fighting shoulder to shoulder with Americans to root them out. But "illegal militia" is a slippery and subjective category in Iraq, where every major political party has its own armed formation. The Kurdish "peshmerga" forces that fought alongside the U.S. from the beginning have been "legal...
...occupation officially ends, the scramble to sort out two critical questions--Who will run the country after June 30? And will the U.S. be able to leave Iraq anytime soon?--is close to a sprint. While U.S. troops launched an all-out, high-risk offensive to destroy Shi'ite militia loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr last week, the U.N. envoy responsible for forming a new Iraqi government, Lakhdar Brahimi, huddled with aides and dignitaries in the Republican Palace in Baghdad to plot the shape of Iraq's political future. Bad as the past two months have been, U.S. officials believe...
Israel has fresh problems in Gaza, where a roadside bomb killed six Israeli soldiers last week. Five more died in a rocket-propelled-grenade attack near the Egyptian border, and two were killed while trying to recover their remains. The bombing stoked fears that the Lebanese militia Hizballah is getting better at moving its signature explosives into the area. A senior Hamas official tells TIME that the roadside bomb was smuggled into Gaza, though he would not say from where. The explosives were probably brought in through a tunnel passing under the Egyptian border or by sea, say Israeli military...