Militia

BAGHDAD, Iraq --Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric and founder of the Mahdi Army militia, discovered recently that two of his commanders had created DVDs of their men killing Sunnis in Baghdad. Documents suggested that they had received money from Iran. So he suspended them and stripped them of power, said two Mahdi leaders in Sadr City, the heart of al-Sadr's support here in the capital. But did he do so as part of his cooperation with the new security plan for Baghdad, which aims to quell the sectarian violence tormenting the city?

UNITED NATIONS -- A high-ranking Sudanese government official colluded with militias to commit atrocities against civilians in the Darfur region, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor said yesterday. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo presented results of a 21-month investigation that he said shows "reasonable evidence" that Ahmad Muhammad Harun, then Sudan's minister of state for the interior, and imprisoned militia leader Ali Kushayb "bear criminal responsibility" for mass executions, rapes and the forcible removal of thousands of people from their homes.

WASHINGTON -- Afghanistan is suffering its most violent year since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, according to an internal United Nations report that sharply contrasts with recent upbeat appraisals by President Bush and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai. "The security situation in Afghanistan is assessed by most analysts as having deteriorated at a constant rate through 2007," said the report compiled by the Kabul office of the U.N. Department of Safety and Security. There were 525 security incidents - attacks by the Taliban and other violent groups, bombings, terrorism of other kinds and abductions - every month during the first half of this year, up from an average of 425 incidents per month in 2006.

Nov. 29 1864 A Colorado militia killed at least 150 peaceful Cheyenne Indians in the Sand Creek Massacre.

ANOTHER springtime mass murder, another ritual invocation of the Second Amendment. The problem: Few conservatives or liberals really understand what it means."

WASHINGTON -- With the doomsday clock rapidly ticking down toward midnight New Year's Eve, the nation's angriest, most fanatic, most rage-filled government haters are primed and ready for action.John Trochmann, the gray-bearded leader of the Militia of Montana, foresees terrorist attacks around the country if computers fail and utilities go dark.Ted Gunderson, former head of the FBI office in Los Angeles and one of the country's leading far-right figures, predicts fire and chaos.Law enforcement wants to know whether they are all bluff and bluster.

NATO hopes to deprive the Serbian militia of fuel by taking out the slivovitz distilleries.Gore had been leading Bradley 54 to 34 in the polls, but now that Bradley is actively campaigning, that's 66 to 23.Rigoberto Herrera, the great Cuban left-hander of the 1970s, took one look at Oriole pitching, decided he was needed again, and the rest is history.Kweisi Mfume for Baltimore County executive!Pub Date: 5/07/99

Amendment's right to bear arms refers to militiasIn order to understand how complete has been the takeover of the asylum by the inmates, one only has to consider how gun lobby misinformation has contributed to the current public misunderstanding of the Second Amendment.Each time employees of the National Rifle Association (federal, state and local politicians) argue the case for gun ownership, they patriotically parrot the phrase "the right to keep and bear arms.In fact, this phrase, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, is chiseled on the wall at the NRA national headquarters in Washington.

Twisting Constitution to suit the purposes of gun rights boostersI am irritated and incensed that Gregory Kane is allowed to continue such a myth as he wrote on Oct. 17 ("Glendening ads attacking Sauerbrey liable to misfire"). History and the Second Amendment are not on the side of the National Rifle Association and its supporters as Mr. Kane suggested in his column.Our federal law distinguishes between the organized militia (the National Guard) and the unorganized militia. The Second Amendment states clearly: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

FOR A MAN WHO claims he's so adamantly against slots in Maryland, Gov. Parris Glendening seems to be taking a reckless gamble. The entire Glendening campaign has one theme: portray Ellen Sauerbrey as an extremist candidate supported by the gun nuts.Glendening's television ads have charged that Sauerbrey was the National Rifle Association's point woman when she was in the state legislature. The NRA, according to Glendening spots, gave Sauerbrey money to legally challenge the results of the 1994 election.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- In one swoop, the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah took over a large section of Lebanon's capital yesterday, altering the country's political balance and demonstrating a level of military discipline and efficiency that left the pro-Western government struggling to exert its authority. In a space of 12 hours, the Iranian-backed group dispatched hundreds of heavily armed Shiite fighters into the western half of the capital, routing pro-government Sunni militiamen, destroying opponents' political offices and shutting down media outlets loyal to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and to Sunni leader Saad Hariri's Future movement.

BAGHDAD -- After long treating radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia gingerly, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ridiculed him yesterday as a man who asks his followers to fight to the death while he resides in safety in Iran. Al-Sadr, who threatened Saturday to declare a formal end to a cease-fire he announced in August, was also described by U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker as running a weakened military organization. The taunting comments came during an unannounced visit by Rice to the Iraqi capital, in which she praised an ongoing nationwide crackdown against armed militias led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his government security forces.

The militia of young men raided a village and took away a woman after peeling off the child that was strapped on her back. They then frog-marched her to a nearby bush where, in front of her husband and older children, they raped and then killed her. This is one of the tales from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where war is an enduring fact of life. Dr. Denis Mukwege, the director and chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu in eastern Congo, has heard of, and sometimes witnessed, such heartrending scenes.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Fighting in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City killed 23 Iraqis yesterday, hospital officials said, and the U.S. military reported five troop deaths, as April showed signs of becoming the worst month for U.S. forces in Iraq since September. At least 11 of the Iraqi deaths occurred when mortar shells landed in residential neighborhoods. Men rushed wounded children to overcrowded emergency rooms in Sadr City hospitals, on foot because of a ban on all vehicular traffic. In some parts of Sadr City, masked militiamen bearing machine guns and grenade launchers remained on the streets.

BAGHDAD -- A barrage of rockets hit Baghdad's fortified Green Zone yesterday, casting doubt on the influence of a Shiite militia cease-fire fewer than 24 hours after it was renewed. At least six blasts resonated across the U.S.-protected enclave, which is home to Iraqi government offices, the U.S. Embassy and military bases. An American official said there were no casualties and no significant damage. Along Iraq's frigid northern border, Turkish forces pressed their largest ground offensive against Kurdish separatist guerrillas in years, pounding rebel targets with artillery and helicopter gunfire.

BAGHDAD -- Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army militia yesterday to extend its cease-fire for six months, boosting hopes that a recent trend toward sharply lower Iraqi civilian and American military deaths in Baghdad would continue. His announcement, read by Sadrist clerics at mosques throughout southern and central Iraq, came precisely two years after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra that unleashed a wave of sectarian violence across Iraq. After the bombing, al-Sadr's huge militia rampaged through Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad, killing hundreds of Sunnis every week and seizing control of three-quarters of the city.

BAGHDAD -- The leader of Iraq's most influential Shiite party offered surprisingly conciliatory remarks yesterday about the former insurgents and other Sunni Arabs who have banded together into militias to work with U.S. forces, stating that the groups had helped improve security and should be continued. In a speech in Najaf, the Shiite holy city, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the party that has long been the backbone of the main Shiite political alliance, said a major reason for recent security improvements was not merely a dependence on official security forces but also a reliance on tribal groups and local councils.

Nov. 29 1864 A Colorado militia killed at least 150 peaceful Cheyenne Indians in the Sand Creek Massacre.

In the fall of 1736, on the Maryland/Pennsylvania border, there occurred a series of incidents often referred to as Cresap's War. The charters of Maryland and Pennsylvania, granted 50 years apart, had failed to precisely define their border between the colonies. This led to periods of conflict between the neighbors for much of the 1700s. On Nov. 24, 1736, Sheriff Samuel Smith of Lancaster, Pa., and a party of 24 men arrested Thomas Cresap and imprisoned him in Philadelphia. Cresap - a Marylander who settled in Wrightsville, Pa., asserting that the Maryland border ran just north of Philadelphia - caused local unrest, once instigating an incursion of Maryland militia to evict German settlers from around York.

BAGHDAD -- A least 30 bodies were discovered in an unfinished west Baghdad house yesterday as police and area resident groups probed neighborhoods they said until recently were under the control of militants from al-Qaida in Iraq. Also yesterday, the Iraqi government credited Iran with helping to rein in Shiite militias and stemming the flow of weapons into Iraq, helping to improve the security situation. The Iraqi government's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, also said that the Shiite-dominated government was making renewed efforts to bring back Sunni Arab ministers who have been boycotting the government.