Word: shying
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Iraqis digested the news of their government's major military offensive against the Mahdi Army in Basra, there were mixed reactions. There was anger and resentment among poor, long-oppressed Shi'ites, like the 2 million residents of Baghdad's massive Sadr City slum, for whom the black-clad Mahdi militia are heroes providing protection from Sunni terrorists and civic services like medical clinics and free schools. Their leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, has called for nationwide protests, and his supporters have clashed with Iraqi and American forces in several cities. Security forces are bracing for massive protests in Sadr City...
Outside the Shi'ite underclass, however, there is little sympathy for Sadr and his cohorts. Most Iraqis wonder why it has taken so long for the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to take on the Mahdi Army. Inevitably, many are asking whether Maliki will go whole hog, pursuing the Mahdi Army until it is completely destroyed. Failure to do so could cost Maliki his political life, and leave Iraq to reckon with a wounded, more dangerous animal. On Wednesday, he gave the militias in Basra 72 hours to surrender their weapons...
...This was expected. It was just a matter of timing," said Vali Nasr, Tufts University scholar and author of the bestselling book, The Shi'a Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future. "The ceasefire and the surge allowed everyone to regroup and rearm. There is still the Shi'a-Sunni conflict. There is still the Sadr-Badr conflict. The surge and the ceasefire merely kept them apart, but there has never been a real political settlement," he said. "No, the big battle for Iraq hasn't been fought yet. The future of Iraq has not been determined." Nasr...
...want to be in," said Anthony Cordesman, a top Iraq analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Cordesman warns against jumping to conclusions that the south is rising up. He says it's more likely that the recent violence is a sign that the many Shi'ite factions that have broken from Sadr's movement are seeking to prove their mettle, and that al-Qaeda cells are seeking new ways to strike as they are forced out of more and more areas by U.S. and Iraqi forces...
...leading U.S. forces in Iraq for the past 15 months, recently reported that Sadr seemed to be softening and his movement becoming more of a faith-based political movement than a militia waiting to kill Americans or take power by force. That said, Odierno expressed concern over the growing Shi'ite rivalries. "I worry about intra-Shi'a violence a bit," he said upon returning to the Pentagon earlier this month. "That could, you know, spiral out of control...