Word: muqtada
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...enters its sixth summer. While the GAO doesn't contradict a Pentagon report that indicates violence in Iraq has dropped significantly, it claims the improvement is based on a rickety foundation provided by the now slowing U.S. troop surge, a creaky cease-fire with Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and a U.S.-led effort to recruit former insurgents for policing--not on any sustained reforms needed for lasting peace. The GAO says that only 10% of Iraqi army battalions have reached operational readiness, a claim the Pentagon calls "misleading." The Pentagon also criticizes the GAO for relying on "outdated...
...current lull in violence, the GAO contends, is like a stool that rests on three legs: the U.S. troop surge, a creaky cease-fire declared by Shi'ite militias loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr and a U.S.-led effort to hire former insurgents to guard their neighborhoods - hardly a platform for sustainable political and social reform. Indeed, the GAO accuses the Pentagon of cherry-picking the information from Iraq that substantiates the claim of progress and ignoring more unpalatable indicators...
...situation is still very fragile," said Talal Ahmed Said, a political writer in Baghdad. "It's possible for any explosion to happen at any time." He thinks the Amara campaign is a sham. "They announced [Amara] a week before [it happened], so all members of the [radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's] Mahdi Army left. After a month they could come back, and likewise in Mosul and Basra...
...Weapons will be in the hands of this group exclusively and will be directed only at the occupier.' MUQTADA AL-SADR, Iraqi Shi'ite cleric, establishing a new force of Mahdi Army fighters to battle U.S.-led troops in Iraq...
...Iraq U.S. Death Toll Hits Wartime Low Nineteen U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq in May, the lowest one-month count since the war began. The drop was attributed to a cease-fire between U.S. forces and Muqtada al-Sadr's militia as well as the troop surge that put 30,000 extra soldiers on the ground in the spring of 2007. Meanwhile, the decline in American casualties comes as Iraqi security forces take on a greater combat role. Coalition forces say 98 Iraqi security personnel were killed in May, along with 553 civilians. "This progress is fragile," a military...