Los Angeles Times - After two years, Mahdi Army men are being seen again in Baghdad neighborhoods. Officials fear the group could take advantage of Iraq's festering political crisis and U.S. troop withdrawals.
Mohammad and his gang are back. There may not be a Glock semiautomatic strapped to his waist anymore, but the terrifying mystique of the Mahdi Army still shrouds the Shiite Muslim militiaman like the menacing black uniform he once wore.
Civil servant Haidar Naji remembers how Mohammad used to strut around his east Baghdad neighborhood like a mob boss, ordering him not to wear Bermuda shorts, too immodest and Western for his Islamic tastes. He felt satisfaction in 2008 when he heard Mohammad, whose last name he never knew, and his friends had been rounded up and imprisoned, a well-deserved comeuppance after the militia's years of kidnapping, torturing and killing Iraqis, and dread this year when he saw them back on the streets, a little more polite, but with the same righteous attitude. |