Word: militiaization
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There is growing concern that local militias now allied with the U.S. are turning their guns on each other as the U.S. prepares to pull back its presence. These groups have been tasked with pacifying some of the most restive corners of Iraq - contributing to the measure of stability enjoyed by the country in the last few months. "We're paying them and training them so they're effective," says Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, of America's new partners, many of whom are former insurgents. But there are signs that these groups, called Concerned...
...militias are already showing that they can take on a life of their own. "Some CLCs are street gangs," says the U.S official in Iraq, "somebody crosses into somebody else's territory, he's going to get shot." Already, there are cases of these neighborhood watch groups turning on each other in a contest for influence and territory. Diyala PRT leader Jones says that CLCs have helped calm the restive provincial capital Baquba in the short term. No easy task, as the city was the headquarters of al-Qaeda in Iraq as recently as last year. "I know in Baquba...
...eerily quiet. In late August, for reasons that are still a little mysterious, Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army to desist from attacking U.S. forces. U.S. officials believe al-Sadr's move was less about helping the U.S. than about purging unruly elements from his 60,000-man militia. Another interpretation is that al-Sadr is simply waiting out the surge and that his fighters will return to the fray when U.S. troops have withdrawn. Whatever the reason, Odierno reckons that al-Sadr's cease-fire is responsible for a 15%-to-20% reduction in attacks on U.S. forces...
...commission said that Israel failed on three counts: the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) failed to rescue the two soldiers kidnapped by Hizballah militia in a cross-border raid; second, despite heavy bombing raids inside Lebanon, Israeli forces failed to destroy Hizballah's leadership; and, finally, the IDF did not protect its citizenry from Hizballah's ceaseless barrage of rockets in northern Israel. More than 1,000 Lebanese and 160 Israelis were killed in the 34-day war. Concluded the report: "We found serious failings and flaws in the lack of strategic thinking and planning, in both the political...
...CLCs have the backing of the Americans. Not present are the Kurdish Pesh Merga (numbering 1,200 in Baghdad), Shi'ite strongman Moqtada al-Sadr's Jaish al-Mahd (JAM to U.S. soldiers, the Mahdi Army to most others), al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Badr corps (the Shi'ite militia that rivals al-Sadr's) and the Iraqi Army. The list goes...