Word: sadr
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...School for Insurgency "The Lessons of Najaf" [Aug. 30] described the flip-flops of the rebellious cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army. Slowly but surely, Iraq is becoming a Shi'ite theocracy like that of Iran. There is absolutely nothing the U.S. can do about it. That change is due in part to the ever growing influence of Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, to whom the Iraqi government turned in order to broker an end to the rebellion in Najaf. Isn't that ironic, since it was Iran and not Iraq that sheltered al-Qaeda operatives...
...caught in a conflict where the thing it does best--fighting--can't win the war. In Iraq today, brute force is a wasting asset, as Major General Peter Chiarelli, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, knows firsthand. On a hot late-summer day, his soldiers entered Baghdad's Sadr City slum to quell attacks from militiamen loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Chiarelli's troops came under fierce fire as dozens of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) pounded their vehicles, and roadside bombs blew the tracks off a tank. For four hours, the two forces battled until the outmatched...
...these days even good intentions don't add up to much. Chiarelli last month had hoped to drain recruits from al-Sadr's Mahdi militia by hiring 15,000 Sadr City men to clean the district's filth-filled streets. When a truce between coalition forces and al-Sadr broke down, however, the work project collapsed. The state of the district helps explain, Chiarelli says, why "a guy in Sadr City feels there is no hope." There's sewage in his yard, he gets one hour of electricity out of six, and he has no job. "If someone offers...
...training of Iraqi forces can transform the situation. Military training involves imparting combat skills and organizational discipline to create efficient fighting units with high levels of morale and confidence. By measure of basic combat skills and organization, the Iraqi security forces may already be substantially superior to Moqtada Sadr's rag-tag Mehdi army, which is composed largely of unemployed young toughs from the Shiite urban ghettoes. The difference between them on the battlefield, however, is based on morale and confidence - in other words, on motivation. The Sadrists are motivated by a strong nationalist sentiment and emboldened by a religious...
...throughout the Shiite south is by now well-established, although as a popular Shiite movement they have a lot more to gain from participating in elections than do the Sunni insurgents. (Shiites make up more than 60 percent of the population, whereas Sunni Arabs comprise less than 20 percent.) Sadr's game is not necessarily to prevent elections, but to ensure that, at some point, his party wins the lion's share of the Shiite vote...