Word: sadr
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Iraqi military's offensive in Basra was supposed to demonstrate the power of the central government in Baghdad. Instead it has proven the continuing relevance of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, stood its ground in several days of heavy fighting with Iraqi soldiers backed up by American and British air power. But perhaps more important than the manner in which the militia fought is the manner in which it stopped fighting. On Sunday Sadr issued a call for members of the Mahdi Army to stop appearing in the streets with their weapons...
...appeared on Monday that militants had heeded Sadr's call in Basra. Reuters reported that armed fighters were no longer in the streets and that the city was calm. In Baghdad the situation was less clear. The government lifted a city-wide curfew in all but a few militia strongholds, signaling that fears of truly disastrous violence had begun to subside. But at least some militants either had not yet received or were choosing to ignore Sadr's directive. Monday morning rockets or mortars once again slammed into the U.S. and Iraqi headquarters in central Baghdad. In what has become...
...militiamen in Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that the government's enemies in the south were "worse than al-Qaeda." A Sadrist spokesman then retorted that fighters should not surrender their weapons except to a government committed to ejecting U.S. troops from Iraq. But on Sunday, Sadr, in a statement released through his office in the holy city of Najaf, called on his followers to stop making "armed appearances." He said he hoped to avoid more bloodshed. This week's violence has claimed hundreds of lives in Basra, Baghdad and elsewhere...
...government's position all along has been that it is fighting criminals, not members of the Mahdi Army. So the importance the government has attached to Sadr's announcement undercuts its assertion that it is not engaged in combat with the radical cleric's forces. More importantly, it was not clear that the militia would comply with the government's initial demand that its members surrender their weapons. Sadr's statement simply asked his followers not to appear with their weapons in public, and said that those who did would not be considered Mahdi Army members...
...uncertainty, Sadr aide Hazem al-Araji said that, after negotiating with the Iraqi government, an agreement had been reached that militants would not disarm. "Jaish al Mahdi [the Mahdi Army] will not surrender its weapons to the state," he said, "because they are weapons of national resistance...