Word: militiaization
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...Shiite clerical establishment at Najaf would like nothing more than to see the radical firebrand Moqtada Sadr take his militia and his confrontation with the Americans out of town. But as much as they loathe Moqtada as an upstart troublemaker, even the most moderate among them are fiercely opposed to any U.S. military operation against him in the Shiite holy city. Everyone from Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the moderate elder of the Iraqi clerics on whose consent the entire transition process rests, to Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN diplomat to whom the Bush administration is looking to devise a political formula that...
...oppressive Suharto era. Wiranto, Indonesia's armed-forces commander during East Timor's successful fight to secede from the country, was indicted in February 2003 by a United Nations-backed court for crimes against humanity. He allegedly failed to prevent atrocities committed by his troops and pro-Indonesia militia against East Timorese civilians. (He has denied the charges and says he tried to stop the violence.) Yet amid the disgruntlement over Megawati's performance, Wiranto's Suharto ties no longer count against him. Wiranto and Yudhoyono, who is also a former general, are both expected to base their campaigns...
...while, those ties paid off. In April 2003, on the day Saddam's statue was toppled, the Pentagon flew Chalabi and his 600-man militia, dubbed the Free Iraqi Forces, into southern Iraq. Chalabi's operatives helped U.S. forces track down members of Saddam's regime and collect troves of valuable documents, and the U.S. rewarded him with a seat on the Iraqi Governing Council. But as U.S. stature in Iraq plummeted, so did Chalabi's fortunes. With Iraq's political future increasingly in the hands of the United Nations, Chalabi faces being cut out. U.N. representative Lakhdar Brahimi...
...weapons to his ragtag band of mercenaries, the Pentagon armed them over the agency's objections. Within days of their arrival, some of Chalabi's forces claimed houses, buildings, document caches and vehicles in Baghdad that belonged to the former regime. Eventually the U.S. disarmed those members of the militia it could still track down. Among Iraqis, Chalabi, dogged by charges that he mishandled U.S. funds and convicted in absentia in 1991 of bank fraud in Jordan--he has always maintained his innocence--has failed to shake his image as a carpetbagger. Polls show that in spite of his efforts...
...Iran actively aiding the revolt against the U.S.? That isn't clear. At the same press conference in which he accused Iran of "meddling," Rumsfeld said he wasn't aware of evidence that Iran was providing direct assistance to al-Sadr's militia. "We're watching it carefully," says a senior coalition military official. "We haven't seen a lot of evidence that suggests that." U.S. intelligence officials say the Tehran-funded Badr corps, the biggest Shi'ite militia, has stayed on the sidelines of the uprising, at least so far. Says a senior U.S. intelligence official: "The Iranians screw...