Word: sadr
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...Mehdi Army, like Hizballah, is an arm of a mass popular movement rooted in Shi'ite mosques but providing a measure of security and welfare. Like Hizballah it has ties with Iran, although unlike Hizballah - which was actually created by Iran - Sadr's links are more recent. While his key rival for Iraqi Shi'ite support, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (currently the largest party in Prime Minister Maliki's coalition), was based in Iran during the Saddam years, Sadr's movement remained inside Iraq operating underground. And in the chaos that followed the toppling...
...reversing the slide to civil war was a reminder of the growing challenge facing coalition forces in stabilizing Iraq. "If we are to avoid a descent into civil war and anarchy," Patey warned, "then preventing the Jaish al-Mahdi [the Mahdi Army of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr] from developing into a state within a state, as Hizballah has done in Lebanon, will be a priority...
...Sadr's ties with Iran have grown steadily in the last couple of years, however, and he warned earlier this year that his forces would retaliate if Iran came under attack from the U.S. or Israel. His Mehdi Army fought two pitched battles with U.S. forces in April and August of 2004, both of which ended inconclusively with political deals. And like Hizballah in Lebanon, Sadr's movement, even as it maintains a private army, is now a key element of the democratically elected government...
...disarming Sadr's army may prove, if anything, even more difficult than disarming Hizballah in Lebanon. That's because the three-year campaign of terror against Shi'ite civilians by Sunni insurgents has led the community to see its militias, rather than the central government, as its only protection. As that violence escalates, the likelihood diminishes that these communities will support any effort to forcefully dismantle the militias. Nor can an agreement to disarm be easily orchestrated by removing the insurgent threat, since the branch of the insurgency responsible for targeting the Shi'ites is led by al-Qaeda...
...what a new strategy might be, but there were two prevailing theories, and each was grievously flawed. "We've got to pick a side," said an Army colonel, who was talking not macro Shi'ite-vs.-Sunni side picking but micro Shi'ite-militia picking. "We should move against Sadr," he added, referring to Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, which has been responsible for much of the recent sectarian violence. But even if successful, a move against Sadr would leave the other prominent Shi'ite militia, the Badr Corps, which has close ties to Iran, in control...