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U.S. and Iraqi forces arrested one of Muqtada al-Sadr's top aides Friday in Baghdad, his office said, as pressure increased on the radical Shiite cleric's militia ahead of a planned security crackdown in the capital. Al-Sadr said in an interview with an Italian newspaper published Friday that the crackdown had already begun and that 400 of his men had been arrested. La Repubblica also quoted him as saying he fears for his life and stays constantly on the move. The raid came as Defense Secretary Robert Gates began his second trip to Iraq in less than a month, arriving in...

Iraq's prime minister has told Shiite militiamen to surrender their arms or face an all-out assault by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces, senior Iraqi officials said Wednesday, as President Bush said he will commit an additional 21,500 American combat troops to the war. Under pressure from the U.S., Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has agreed to crack down on fighters controlled by his most powerful political ally, Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, according to officials. Previously, al-Maliki had resisted the move. "Prime Minister al-Maliki has told everyone that there will be no escape from attack," said a senior Shiite legislator and close...

A NEW offensive against Iraq's Mahdi Army - a militia blamed for sectarian death squad killings - is to be launched by the United States and Britain, it was claimed yesterday. US-led forces are to target the organisation, led by the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, after the Pentagon described it as the biggest threat to Iraq's security. Diplomats say Washington is impatient to confront its key figures. Several officials in the Shiite political parties that dominate the unity government of the prime minister, Nuri al- Maliki, are also losing patience with Sadr's supporters and predict more raids like last week's...

Moqtada al-Sadr with deputy, who was arrested by US Forces.

One way to understand Moqtada al-Sadr is to think of him as a young Mafia don. He aims for respectability, and is willing to kill for it. Yet the extent of his power isn't obvious to the untrained eye. He has no standing army or police force, and the Mahdi Army gunmen he employs have no tanks or aircraft. You could mistake him—at your peril—for a common thug or gang leader. And if he or his people were to kill you for your ignorance, he wouldn't claim credit. But the message would be clear to those who understand the brutal...

If you want to imbue a discussion with an air of gravitas, you start by identifying the main character by his full name: George Herman Ruth. Dwight David Eisenhower. Homer Jay Simpson.So consider the case of one William Joseph Buckner, who almost two decades ago (the precise anniversary is Wednesday, Oct. 25) bent over to field a grounder hit by Mookie Wilson. We all know what happened after that -- you've seen the video a few jillion times, you've read about the scapegoating, and the subsequent reaction to the scapegoating. After 20 years of scrutiny under the electron microscope of...

American and Iraqi forces face a major problem in Baghdad: how to deal with the Mahdi Army, which has been linked to death squads responsible for a string of assassinations and kidnappings. Worse, the Mahdi Army's leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, seems to be losing his grip on the thousands of armed men who once followed his every word. "There are forces that are controlled by Moqtada, but there are commanders that are not controlled by him; there are death squads that are not controlled by him," U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad told NEWSWEEK. Under the leadership of Sadr, the Mahdi...

Eventually, we learned a lesson from Fallujah. It is the same lesson illustrated by American freelance writer Steven Vincent’s death. After the four American contractors were burned and hung from that bridge in Fallujah in April of 2004, we took a step back. Perhaps afraid that we would be perceived as retaliating in anger, we waited and tried to let that problem solve itself. It didn’t. Fallujah, already a dangerous nest for the Sunni insurgency, metastasized into a city of terror, a base from which Baathist and al Qaeda butchers launched their war on Americans and on the people of...

BAGHDAD, Oct 12 (AFP) - The US commander for Baghdad's Sadr City professed "cautious optimism" Tuesday over a peace initiative with Shiite rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr's militia, but warned that breakaway factions of the radical movement were refusing to comply. "I'm cautiously optimistic for a couple of reasons. One, we've never before had an initiative announced with the endorsement of Moqtada Sadr to disarm and disband... They'll generally listen to him," Colonel Abe Abrams told AFP. "And so that's a good sign. But it's just a sign. It's not a turning point. It's a starting point. It's not a dramatic...

The deputy for Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said al-Sistani and Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have reached an agreement in talks to end the standoff in Najaf, Iraq. Aides described the agreement as a "positive deal."

Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr has rejected an Iraqi government ultimatum to renounce violence and disband his militia, says a senior aide. The head of al-Sadr's office in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya, Aus al-Khafaji, told Aljazeera Thursday afternoon that the Shia leader had refused to accept a list of tough conditions set out a few hours earlier by Minister of State Kasim Daud. The rejections raises the prospect of a major assault by US and Iraqi forces to retake the area of Najaf where al-Sadr and his al-Mahdi Army militia are holed up. At least five people have been...

<p>Granted, there is upheaval in the world and there are battles where a great deal is at stake -- life itself. All the more precious, then, the minor skirmishes on the home front that mean a great deal in a small way and remind us of how lucky we are to feel innocent hatreds, from summer to summer, at the ballpark.</p>