Word: militiaization
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Followers of the cleric and members of his thousands-strong militia, the Mahdi Army - which has been engaged in heavy fighting with Iraqi and U.S. forces in recent weeks - expressed outrage on Friday afternoon, as news spread of Nouri's death. The province of Najaf, where Nouri was killed, has seen a rise in intra-Shi'ite violence in the past year, mostly in the form of tit-for-tat killings between Sadr's Mahdi Army and other Shi'ite militias, including the rival Badr Brigade, which has links to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party...
...Obama asked Crocker about Iran: We couldn't expect Iran to have no influence in Iraq, could we? "We have no problem with a good, constructive relationship between Iran and Iraq," Crocker replied. "The problem is with the Iranian strategy of backing extremist militia groups and sending in weapons and munitions that are used against Iraqis and against our own forces." Obama then pursued Barbara Boxer's previous line of questioning: If Iran is such a threat to Iraq, why was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greeted with open arms and apparently a lot of official kissing in Baghdad last month...
...their pious human heroes, Ali and Hussein. The 58-year-old Sunni is a former professor at Baghdad University and a long-time Ba'ath Party member; he is not particularly fond of his Shi'ite countrymen. He claims he and his son were kidnapped by a Shi'ite militia and tortured for over a year at the Jadiriya prison in Baghdad, and that he does not know the fate of his son. "It's a tragedy," says the teary-eyed Sammaree, accusing the Shi'ites of turning his country into a tool of Iran...
...whether this recent call for restraint will actually ensure calm remains uncertain - Sadr also threatened to call off the Mahdi Army's now defunct cease-fire if attacks by government forces continued. And his response to a demand by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that he disband his militia or face exclusion from the political process was typically ambiguous: Sadr said he would put the matter to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani in Najaf, and disband his army if Sistani, the most powerful Shi'ite religious authority in Iraq, ordered him to do so. That may simply have been a maneuver...
...Despite the cautiously optimistic assessments offered by Petraeus and Crocker, many Iraqis remain pessimistic about the weeks and months ahead. The country is still reeling from the fresh wave of violence brought on by Maliki's disastrous military offensive against Sadr's militia that began in Basra two weeks ago. On Tuesday, Sadr City - the sprawling Baghdad Shi'ite slum that is the capital's largest neighborhood and a stronghold of the Mahdi Army - remained locked down as fighting continued between militia fighters and Iraqi and American forces. Politicians from a number of parties warned of an impending humanitarian crisis...