Word: sadr
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...Baghdad alone is home to at least 36,000 displaced people. And there is increasing evidence that radical militias, chiefly Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, are orchestrating violent purges aimed at transforming mixed neighborhoods like Washash into ethnic strongholds. U.S. soldiers who raided a suspected Mahdi Army safe house in Washash last month say they found pages from a neighborhood housing log; among the papers was a list of 65 houses where Shi'ite families have replaced Sunni families. On other pages were drafts of threat letters clearly intended for delivery to Sunni homes. The log included a roster...
...operate in Washash don't believe the ongoing sectarian violence flows just from frictions on the streets there anymore. Instead, they put blame squarely on Mahdi Army operatives from outside the neighborhood, militants who U.S. soldiers say are out to turn Washash into a Shi'ite bastion for al-Sadr on the west side of the Tigris. "Ninety percent of the problem comes from outside in," says 2nd Lieut. Graham Ward, an Army platoon leader who spends many days patrolling house to house on foot in the Washash area. "All fingers point to Sadr City...
...doing much to stop them. The Association of Muslim Scholars, an eminent Sunni group, continues to circulate DVDs that feature interviews with Sunnis who tell stories of displacement by Mahdi Army loyalists and government forces from the Ministry of the Interior. For their part, al-Sadr's allies downplay the specter of an Iraq broken forever along sectarian divides. "It is natural for the Sunni families to leave their homes in places with a Shi'ite majority," said Sheik Salem Fariji, an official in Najaf with al-Sadr's office, which runs housing programs for Shi'ites. "This...
...base to resist U.S. demands will likely be greater than whatever leverage President Bush can bring to bear: The Iraqi leader has long made clear that he can only move against the Shi'ite militias after the Sunni insurgent threat has been removed, and the bloodshed in Sadr City Thursday will only reinforce that point. Indeed, Sadr's party threatened to quit the government if Maliki's meeting with Bush goes ahead next week - and Sadr's support has been critical to keeping him in power...
...latest escalation in bloodshed began with a two-hour siege Thursday by Sunni gunmen on the Ministry of Health; then suspected Sunni insurgents detonated a series of bombs in crowded places in Sadr City and other Shi'ite neighborhoods that killed more than 160 people. Shi'ite militiamen retaliated by firing mortars at mosques and other targets in neighboring Sunni suburbs. And tensions were further inflamed by an incident in which U.S. troops, searching in Sadr City for a kidnapped American soldier, fired on a van that refused to slow down in response to a signal, killing four civilians...