(from Full Spectrum Disorder - The Military in the New American Century, pp. 53-57, from Chapter 5, "Somalia - The Meanings of Bakara" by Stan Goff)

South Mogadishu - 1993

In Somalia, all (Somali) parties significantly, and predictably, strengthened their defensive postures to ensure they held onto the terrain they already controlled.

A Pakistani attack in June 1993 against Mohammed Farah Aidid’s Somali National Alliance (SNA) in Mogadishu met that well-prepared defense, and the SNA delivered them a decisive tactical defeat that pivoted on a very well-prepared anti-armor ambush – which the Day paper refers to, demagogically, as a "massacre." The SNA’s next major ambush would be against the Americans in Bakara.

Tens of thousands of supporters of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have marched in Baghdad to denounce the US presence in Iraq and call for a speedy trial of Saddam Hussein on the second anniversary of his overthrow.

Friday 08 April (al Jazeera, Agence France-Press)

Iraqi leaders have called for a mass demonstration against the US-led troop presence on the second anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government.

An Old U.S. Foe Rises Again in Iraq
Shiite Mahdi Army Growing Bolder in South
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 8, 2005; Page A01

GHARAF, Iraq - Over the loudspeakers set up in this small town in a backwater of southern Iraq, the commands came in staccato bursts. "Forward!" a man clad in black shouted to the militiamen. "March!"

Sadr Group Signals Rejection Of Election
Shiite Cleric Eyes Role Outside System
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 24, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- Around the corner from a five-mile line stretching toward a gas station, past election posters calling voting a religious duty, hundreds of bleary-eyed protesters threw down what goes for prayer carpets among followers of the Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr. They put down black-checkered kaffiyehs, the sweaters they wore, sacks of flour distributed as government rations and, most commonly, scraps of cardboard.

By Michael Schwartz - http://www.atimes.com

Sadr City - the overcrowded, under-serviced 3 million-person Baghdad slum that has been the site of some of the fiercest fighting in Iraq - is the linchpin of the war.

from juancole.com, august 11th, 2004.

The US military pounded Mahdi Army positions in the vast cemetery of Najaf again on Tuesday, with artillery and aerial bombardment. The Americans also began asking the civilian population (ordinarily nearly half a million strong) to leave the city, spurring fears that the US planned another massive assault. The suqs or traditional markests of downtown Najaf have already been reduced to rubble by US bombings.

from juancole.com " US Attack "Uncivilized": Jafari
Fresh Violence in Sadr City 15 US Soldiers Wounded, 3 Dead in recent Fighting".

Before I go over the details, here is my reading of what is going on in Najaf. The truce between the Mahdi Army and US/ Iraqi forces broke down because they had different ideas of what the truce entailed. US-appointed governor Adnan al-Zurufi had demanded that the Mahdi Army disarm and/or leave Najaf. Muqtada al-Sadr on the other hand interpreted the truce to entail limiting his militia's activities to certain areas of the city and to have them avoid clashes with police and US troops.

July 17, 2004, by TOM LASSETER, Knight Ridder Tribune News

BAGHDAD, IRAQ - From directing traffic to organizing blood drives, the militia overseen by firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr is taking control of Baghdad's largest neighborhood even as Iraqi and U.S. officials demand that the group disband.

Resistance attacks continue despite handover

by Al Jazeera

Tuesday 29 June 2004 6:23 GMT

Three US marines have been killed in a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad in the first reported fatal attack on US occupation forces in Iraq since the formal handover of authority to an interim government.