Word: moqtada
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...surge [had an effect]. But I cannot say it's only the surge. It was three things that really put the violence down: first, the Sunni awakening, second, the concrete barriers closing up areas in Baghdad. And the third is that Moqtada al-Sadra ordered his troops to stop their operations against multinational forces...
...eighth trip to Iraq since the U.S. invaded the country in 2003, arrived on Sunday, although for security reasons, only a handful of Iraqis had been made aware of his visit. "Unfortunately," said Faleh Hassan Shansal, a member of the parliamentary bloc loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr, "all American politicians and leaders sneak into Iraq in the darkness, without letting anyone know...
...buzzing: several new kebab restaurants have sprung up, and many shops have expanded. Karrada Out is the opposite, dark and empty, with most of the shops shuttered. Why? One explanation is that many of the businessmen have fled to Jordan and Syria. Another is that the Mahdi Army, Moqtada al-Sadr's Shi'ite militia, has taken charge of large portions of Karrada, extorting prrotection money from shopkeepers...
...than a quibble about constitutional law. The dissenting vote on the Presidential Council was cast by Vice President Adel Abdul-Medhi whose Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) is the Shi'a power bloc with relatively closer ties to the U.S. than the rival party run by Shi'ite strongman Moqtada al-Sadr, who leads the contentious, trigger-happy Mahdi Army. Abdul-Medhi said that the Provincial Powers law contravened the constitutional right of voters of each province to elect their own governor (a sort of states rights versus federal powers argument, in American constitutional parlance...
...political activism in addition to militia violence. Its activists can be found doing everything from from holding seats in parliament to offering cut-rate propane in poor Shi'ite neighborhoods. That the Sadrists might choose to emphasize some of these activities over armed confrontation is quite plausible, but Moqtada al-Sadr is notoriously unpredictable, and the thinking behind his moves is often unclear. Sadr could just as easily be simply biding his time until surge troops leave in July...