Word: sadr
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...been quiet until dawn on Sunday. As the sun began to rise, Lieutenant-Colonel Jeffrey Sauer's soldiers in eastern Baghdad, based in the shadow of the Shi'ite milita stronghold of Sadr City, were hit with a series of rockets. The attacks were well-coordinated and sophisticated; they were also the first heavy shelling of U.S. bases in the area in several months...
...American troops attempted to establish a constant presence in Baghdad's neighborhoods, local insurgents and militia groups pushed back. In 9 Nisan, Sauer's troops sought to demonstrate to residents that they and the Iraqi government, not the militia, controlled the streets. But local militants loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army would not give up their turf without a fight. "It was a contest of wills," Freeman says. "We just kept coming at them, and going out there, and getting into the neighborhood...
...mask an often violent competition between rival factions. Since shortly after the American invasion The Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) - known until May 2007 as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI - has clashed, often violently, with followers of the Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. This summer Sadr announced a "freeze" in the activities of his Mahdi Army militia and the two sides have reached an uneasy truce. But residents in Najaf say the rivalry has simply gone underground. "The relationship between the two sides in the media is the opposite of reality," says...
Discipline and deference to law and order, though, are rarely the strong suit of a militia. And the Sadrists, in particular, have little motivation to genuinely embrace the government. Sadr rose to prominence in 2003 and 2004 as an outsider claiming parties like SIIC did not represent poor and marginalized Shi'ites. After bloody fighting in 2004 he agreed to join the political process, and the Sadrists are power brokers in the national legislature. But they say they are still marginalized in regional governments...
...Baghdad, which killed a member of his security detail and wounded the ambassador and three others. Military officials said they believed that attack was the work of a Shi'ite militant group known as the Battalions of Hussein, a splinter group of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army. The same group made life difficult for British Forces in Basra and has recently shown up in Diwaniyah, claiming responsibility for mortar and rocket attacks and dropping leaflets in neighborhoods surrounding two joint Polish-Iraqi outposts, warning residents to flee coming attacks...