Word: militiaization
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...Zambian city of Kabwe, where the Chinese own a manganese smelter, the local shops are stocked with Chinese-made clothes rather than local ones. In the oil-rich delta region of Nigeria, where Chinese rigs have a reputation for poor safety and employment practices, a militia group recently warned the Chinese they would be targeted for attack unless they changed their ways...
Said Ali, 21, is a volunteer fighter for the Shabab militia, the feared enforcers of the Islamic Courts Union. The U.S. brands the organization as an ally of al-Qaeda; in reality, it is also a nationalist anti-warlord movement that contains many Muslim moderates and has no international ambitions. He was 11 when he left his village in southern Somalia and traveled to Mogadishu to look for an education. But all public education had collapsed with the last functioning government in 1991, leaving private school the only option. And Said Ali, like most of his generation, was unable...
...most of the interfering, arguably, was al-Maliki himself. Although he nominally heads an all-party, national unity government, al-Maliki is a Shi'ite partisan, and he has pursued a blatantly sectarian course in the eight months since he was sworn in, antagonizing Sunnis and allowing Shi'ite militias to run amok. His main political backing comes from Moqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand leader of the most dangerous militia, the Mahdi Army. In his speeches, al-Maliki routinely promises to deal firmly with the militias, but in practice, he has always shielded them from American arms. When U.S. forces...
...baggage and a faint profile, two traits widely viewed as assets. But for many Iraqis the blank space on Maliki's face has filled in since then with reflections of the country's deepest problems. To look at Maliki now is to see streets shattered by car bombs, parading militia fighters and masked hangmen making basement snuff videos...
...Meanwhile, some civilian Iraqi government agencies such as the Ministry of Interior have become franchises of the Mahdi Army militia. And Iraq's parliament was essentially dissolved in November, when Sadr's loyalists began a boycott at his behest in protest of Maliki's meeting with President Bush. As the White House crafts its new approach to Iraq, little of the government appears salvageable even in the eyes of leaders like Muttlag who are staking their careers, and sometimes their lives, on the eventual success of a civilian government. With so little material left to work with in Baghdad, many...