Shiite Fighters

Source: www.chron.com --- 10 days ago
The quarrel didn't last long. Angry Sunni Fighters temporarily abandoned their checkpoints in a western Baghdad neighborhood after Iraqi soldiers briefly detained some of their colleagues, whose U.S.-backed patrols have helped curb violence. ...

Source: www.detnews.com --- 10 days ago
BAGHDAD -- The quarrel didn't last long. ...

Source: www.iht.com --- 27 days ago
Iraq's Shiite-led government promised Monday to continue paying salaries of thousands of mostly Sunni Fighters who have turned against al-Qaida but said the U.S. figure on their numbers was too high. ...

Source: www.cnn.com --- 14 days ago
Iraqi Shiite Fighters who trained inside Iran to operate in assassination squads are starting to return home, the U.S. military told CNN. ...

Source: www.cnn.com --- 14 days ago
Iraqi Shiite Fighters who trained inside Iran to operate in assassination squads are starting to return home, the U.S. military told CNN. ...

Source: www.cnn.com --- 14 days ago
Iraqi Shiite Fighters who trained inside Iran to operate in assassination squads are starting to return home, the U.S. military told CNN. ...

Source: edition.cnn.com --- 14 days ago
Iraqi Shiite Fighters who trained inside Iran to operate in assassination squads are starting to return home, the U.S. military told CNN. ...

Source: edition.cnn.com --- 13 days ago
Iraqi Shiite Fighters who trained inside Iran to operate in assassination squads are starting to return home, the U.S. military told CNN. ...

Source: www.sfgate.com --- 28 days ago
From the start of the Iraq invasion, Anbar province was a symbol for everything dangerous and unwinnable with the war. It harbored rebellious Sunni Fighters opposed to the Shiite leaders in Baghdad, street battles killed more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers, and... ...

Source: www.latimes.com --- 44 days ago
Distrusted by the Shiite-led government, the Sons of Iraq face arrests and could return to insurgency. They have been key in helping calm the violence. An emboldened Iraqi government has launched an aggressive campaign to disband a U.S.-funded force of Sunni Arab Fighters that has been key to Iraq's fragile peace, arresting prominent members and sending others into hiding or exile as their former patrons in the American military reluctantly stand by. ...

Source: www.baltimoresun.com --- 48 days ago
Leaders distrust U.S.-backed Fighters The Shiite-led government is cracking down on U.S.-backed Sunni Arab Fighters in one of Iraq's most turbulent regions, arresting some leaders, disarming dozens of men and banning them from manning checkpoints except alongside official security forces. ...

Source: www.military.com --- 47 days ago
The Shiite-led government is cracking down on U.S.-backed Sunni Arab Fighters in one of Iraq's most turbulent regions, arresting some leaders, disarming dozens of men and banning them from manning checkpoints except alongside official security forces. ...

Source: www.bostonherald.com --- 48 days ago
BAGHDAD - The Shiite-led government is cracking down on U.S.-backed Sunni Arab Fighters in one of Iraq's most turbulent regions, arresting some leaders, disarming dozens... ...

Source: www.charlotteobserver.com --- 20 days ago
The Bush administration said Tuesday it was imposing economic sanctions against five people accused of supporting violence in Iraq, including an Iranian who allegedly planned one of the most sophisticated attacks against U.S. forces since the war started. The list released by the Treasury Department also includes a Syrian television station that allegedly has been airing Iraqi insurgent propaganda videos as the U.S. steps up pressure on Damascus to clamp down on supplies being funneled to extremists in the neighboring nation. The department's action freezes any bank accounts or other financial assets found in the United States belonging to those listed and prohibits Americans from doing business with them. The Iranian, Abdul-Reza Shahlai, was identified as a deputy commander in the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps that U.S. officials believe is supporting Shiite extremists in Iraq. "In one instance, Shahlai planned the January 20, 2007, attack by JAM Special Groups against U.S. soldiers stationed at the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala, Iraq," the statement said. JAM is the Arabic acronym for the Mahdi Army militia - one of the most feared groups in Iraq before anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered it to uphold a cease-fire. In that attack, up to a dozen Fighters with false IDs disguised themselves as an American security team to penetrate security and open fire in the provincial gov ...

Source: www.kentucky.com --- 24 days ago
The Iraqi government will not turn its back on the men who paid in blood for the country's fragile peace, said the officials on stage in the ballroom at Baghdad's al-Rasheed Hotel, referring to U.S.-paid Sunni militias. But the leaders of the so-called Awakening Councils listened warily. "I don't trust a word they said," said one, afterward. The Shiite-led Iraqi government is due to take control of the 99,000-strong militias Oct. 1, absorbing 20,000 into the police and army and providing jobs, schooling or vocational training for the rest. For almost two years the Pentagon paid men in the mainly Sunni group at least $300 a month each to fight al-Qaida and other Sunni extremist groups. They were key in breaking the terrorist group's stranglehold in parts of Anbar and Diyala provinces and still face kidnappings, executions and suicide bombings there. But the recent alliance was not entirely comfortable at all times for any of the parties involved. Many of the rank and file from the U.S. military and Iraqi security forces were at first reluctant to fight alongside men who, before they were put on payroll, sometimes tried to kill them. Last month, U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus said the Iraqi government had been deliberately slow bringing them into the security forces here. On the other side, Awakening Fighters fear prosecution for past crimes, and question whether the government will make good on its promises. ...

Source: www.charlotteobserver.com --- 12 days ago
American soldiers accidentally shot and killed the leader of a local U.S.-allied Sunni group Tuesday after coming under attack in a volatile area north of Baghdad, the military said. The shooting comes a week before the Shiite-led Iraqi government begins to assume authority over the Sunni groups known as the Sons of Iraq, or Awakening Councils. The military has credited the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida in Iraq as a key factor in the sharp decline in violence over the past year. The head of the group in Siniyah, Jassim al-Garrout, was killed after he rushed to the site of an ambush against U.S. forces in the area, which lies between the northern oil-hub of Beiji and Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, according to witnesses and police. One of al-Garrout's comrades said the group would demand an apology from the Americans. "The Awakening Councils have become targets of al-Qaida, the government and sometimes even the U.S. forces. We do not know our fate and we are feeling lost," Farooq Sami said. "We are undertaking the task of combating terrorists, yet we are left sometimes unpaid and without money. We have participated in maintaining peace and security in our area, yet we sometimes do not get our salaries." Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, said Monday that the Iraqi government will begin next week paying the salaries of about 54,000 of the mostly Sunni Fighters in the province surrounding Baghdad. In Tues ...

Source: www.star-telegram.com --- 48 days ago
The Shiite-led government is cracking down on U.S.-backed Sunni Arab Fighters in one of Iraq's most turbulent regions. ...

Source: www.kansas.com --- 23 days ago
A bomb concealed in a kiosk used to sell ice killed four people and wounded nine others Saturday at a security checkpoint in Baghdad, Iraqi authorities said. Northeast of the capital, six Kurdish troops died in a roadside bombing that reflected how ethnic tensions in some parts of Iraq remain dangerously high, a local official said. The dead in the attack in eastern Baghdad included three Iraqi police commandos and a member of a U.S.-funded armed Sunni group that has turned against al-Qaida in Iraq, police and medics said on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media. Seven Iraqi security personnel and two bystanders were injured. The Kurdish peshmerga forces, including a brigadier general, died while on patrol in the city of Khanaqin, 90 miles northeast of Baghdad near the border with Iran, said Ibrahim Bajilan, head of the Diyala provincial council. Two other troops were injured. Diyala is critical to Baghdad's security because of its strategic importance as a conduit for the smuggling of weapons and Fighters to the capital. Its proximity to Iran is also important because U.S. officials have accused Tehran of supporting Shiite militias in Iraq. ...