Episode 18: The Mahdi Army
The Mahdi Army, also known as the Mahdi Militia or Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM) (Arabic جيش المهدي), is an Iraqi paramilitary force created by the Iraqi Shi'a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in June 2003.
On April 4, 2004, the group spearheaded the first major armed confrontation against the U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq from the Shi'ite community in an uprising that followed the banning of al-Sadr's newspaper and attempts to arrest Muqtada al-Sadr. This fight lasted until a truce on June 6 when Muqtada al-Sadr ordered fighters of the Mahdi army to go into a ceasefire unless attacked first. The truce broke down in August 2004 after provocative actions by the Mahdi Army, with new hostilities erupting.
The group is armed with various light weapons, including improvised explosive devices, also called road-side bombs. Many of the bombs used during attacks on Iraqi Security Forces and Coalition Forces have used infra-red sensors as triggers, a technique that was used widely by the IRA in Northern Ireland in the early to mid 1990s.
Read more about this topic: International Terrorism Since 1945
Famous quotes containing the words episode and/or army:
“The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“I was interested to see how a pioneer lived on this side of the country. His life is in some respects more adventurous than that of his brother in the West; for he contends with winter as well as the wilderness, and there is a greater interval of time at least between him and the army which is to follow. Here immigration is a tide which may ebb when it has swept away the pines; there it is not a tide, but an inundation, and roads and other improvements come steadily rushing after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)