Word: sadr
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Baghdad's biggest, most brazen attacks against Sunni targets are almost automatically assumed to be his handiwork. Iraqi and U.S. officials say Abu Deraa is the mastermind behind the killing of thousands of Sunnis this year. Loosely affiliated with the Mahdi Army of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, Abu Deraa's death squad is suspected of involvement in some of the most daring kidnappings in the capital--including the Oct. 23 snatch of the U.S. soldier Ahmed Qusai al-Taie and the Nov. 14 raid on the Ministry of Higher Education. (Although more than half of the 150 abductees...
...Even that goal can sometimes seem beyond reach. In the aftermath of the Thanksgiving Day suicide bombings in Sadr City, many residents were asking why the U.S. forces had failed to stop the bombers, generally believed to be Sunni jihadis. After all, American soldiers had recently been raiding the giant Baghdad slum, attacking Shi'ite militias that enjoy a great deal of popular support there. Inevitably, some Shi'ites put two and two together - and got 22: On Saturday a cleric representing Moqtada al-Sadr, who enjoys demigod status in Sadr City, accused the U.S. of ganging up with Sunni...
...other hand, some Sunnis were accusing the U.S. of siding with the Shi'ite-led government to allow, even encourage, the militias to run amok in the wake of the Sadr City bombings. Harith al-Dari, who heads the largest Sunni clerical group, declared: "The government and the occupation forces are preparing the suitable environments to the militias and killing gangs to attack our people...
...overheated rhetoric aside, this much is clear: The Sadr City bombings and their grim fallout again exposed the limitations of the joint U.S.-Iraqi Baghdad security plan, dubbed Operation Forward Together, that began last summer. The plan brought more than 7,200 additional U.S. troops into the Iraqi capital, but it has failed to slow the sectarian killings and kidnappings that are threatening to drag Iraq into a civil war. In the past two weeks alone, Baghdad has seen the most audacious kidnapping (150 men taken captive from a government office in broad daylight) and the deadliest bombing (more than...
...thousands of police), they have, with remarkable consistency, managed not to be where they are needed most. Despite the weekend-long curfew, supposedly enforced by the Iraqi forces, there seemed little by way of security forces activity restricting the movement of Shi'ite mobs seeking vengeance for the Sadr City bombings...