Word: shying
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...also has a serious policy dispute with the U.S., and a sense of betrayal. They promised him, last summer when they launched the major security offensive to retake Baghdad, that the U.S. would take care of Sunni guerrilla movement in Baghdad before moving against Mahdi Army [the Shi'ite militia of Moqtada al-Sadr, whose stronghold is in Baghdad]. That way, Maliki could to go to the Shi'ite elders in Baghdad and say, you are safe, you no longer need militias and they are a source of discord, so they must be disbanded. But the Americans failed to dislodge...
...Maliki's outrage over attacks on the Mahdi Army are not a matter of principle; it's about the fact that the U.S. hasn't first done what it said it would do, which was to eliminate the threat of the Sunni insurgents in Baghdad. The reason Shi'ite communities believe they need militias is to protect them from the Sunni guerrillas, which they say the government and the U.S. are not doing. And Maliki can't go and tell them to get rid of their militias while they remain vulnerable to attack by Sunni guerrillas...
...accused of sectarian killings], while the Mahdi Army has been drawn into the police force in some parts of the country - but they tend to be incorporated in ways that retain their militia identity. The calculation of the U.S. and Maliki last summer was correct: The militias exist because Shi'ites feel insecure. And that feeling of insecurity has been deliberately provoked and reinforced by Sunni insurgents who have targeted Shi'ites. The Shi'ites are tired of getting blown up, and they believe that if they arm themselves and set up checkpoints in their neighborhood, they can provide their...
...also worth remembering that Shi'ite politicians commanding militias are not following a Western political model in which participating in government at the same time as maintaining a private militia is unthinkable. The only country in the region with which they're familiar that has elections, a parliament, a president and so on, is Iran. And many of the institutions in Iran, since the revolution, have a dual character. So Hakim and Sadr think of their militias as analogous to Iran's Revolutionary Guards, which exist as a paramilitary institution separate from and not entirely integrated with the regular military...
...idea that Iran is being unhelpful or is somehow helping the Sunni insurgency has no basis in reality. Tehran does not want Iraq to break up: They're as worried as Turkey is about the Kurds becoming independent. They want a united Iraq, a democratic Iraq in which the Shi'ites' majority makes itself felt. They obviously want their preferred Shi'ite leaders, such as Maliki and Hakim, to be in power, rather than, for example, a former Baathist Shi'ite such as Iyad Allawi [the former prime minister installed by the U.S.], or Moqtada Sadr, who is viewed...