Word: militiaization
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...militia's strikes have grown more daring. In March last year, some 400 Naxalites surrounded a police camp in southern Chhattisgarh, lit the camp up using powerful lights and generators and lobbed grenades and petrol bombs for more than three hours, killing 55 people. Last December, in the same area, a single Maoist overpowered a jail guard and set free 294 inmates, including 15 senior Naxalite fighters. In February this year, more than 100 insurgents laid siege to three police stations, a police outpost, a police training school and a government armory in the state of Orissa, killing 13 policemen...
...That would be easier if not for the emergence in Chhattisgarh three years ago of a civil militia known as Salwa Judum, which means either "peace mission" or "collective hunt" depending on who's doing the translating. The movement's backers say it developed spontaneously when local villagers grew tired of the Naxalites' brutal mafia-like tactics. Chhattisgarh police then appointed thousands of young men, some of them still teenagers, as "special police officers," supplied them with weapons and pushed them to fight the Maoists. Human-rights groups say the special police officers use many of the same tactics...
...players. In the early days of the occupation, Sistani's call for calm undoubtedly allowed American troops to avoid fierce resistance to their presence in southern Iraq. But Sistani's repeated appeals for peace lost their weight as sectarian violence rose in Iraq, with Sadr leading the Mahdi Army militia in an inexorable year-long quest for Shi'ite revenge following the bombing of a revered shrine in Samarra in early 2006. As a result, Sadr, a mere cleric, towered as the most powerful Shi'ite figure in Iraq, eclipsing the more senior Sistani's prestigious status as ayatollah. Sistani...
...from view under Sadr's orders. Sheik Salman al-Freiji, director of the Sadr Movement, said the Mahdi Army plans to honor the cease-fire, though signs of tensions are already emerging. Iraqi forces came in much greater numbers than Mahdi Army leaders expected, al-Freiji said, leaving the militia wary of the Iraqi army's next move. A key test of whether the truce will hold is likely to happen in the coming days as Iraqi forces begin to move from the streets into buildings around Sadr City to search for the militia's heavy weapons. It remains unclear...
...Israel's main interest in dialogue with Syria lies in reining in the Lebanese Shi'ite militia Hizballah, and also the Palestinian Hamas movement, both implacable enemies of Israel that enjoy extensive Syrian patronage. The Jewish State's other objective: to limit the malign influence of Syria's key ally, Iran...