Sadr City, formerly known as Al-Thawra and Saddam City, is a suburb district of the city of Baghdad, Iraq. It was built in 1959 by Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim and named Al-Rafidain District. After the US-led invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam, it was unofficially renamed Sadr City after Ayatollah Muhammad al-Sadr.
The occupation of Iraq (2003–2011) began on 20 March 2003, when the United States invaded with a military coalition to overthrow Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and continued until 18 December 2011, when the final batch of American troops left the country. While the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia were the largest contributors to the coalition, 29 other countries, such as Japan, were involved in the Iraq War in a lesser capacity. Additionally, several private military contractors took part in enforcing the occupation.
Muqtada al-Sadr is an Iraqi Shia Muslim cleric, politician and militia leader. He inherited the leadership of the Sadrist Movement from his father. He founded the now dissolved Mahdi Army militia in 2003 that resisted the American occupation of Iraq. He also founded the Promised Day Brigade militia after the dissolution of the Mahdi Army; both were backed by Iran. In 2014, he founded the Peace Companies militia and is its current head. In 2018, he joined his Sadrist political party to the Saairun alliance, which won the highest number of seats in the 2018 and 2021 Iraqi parliamentary elections.
Events in the year 2004 in Iraq.
The Mahdi Army was an Iraqi Shia militia created by Muqtada al-Sadr in June 2003 and disbanded in 2008.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq was completed and the regime of Saddam Hussein was toppled in May 2003, an Iraqi insurgency began that would last until the United States left in 2011. The 2003–2006 phase of the Iraqi insurgency lasted until early 2006, when it escalated from an insurgency to a Sunni-Shia civil war, which became the most violent phase of the Iraq War.
During Post-invasion Iraq, Operation Iron Saber was a coalition strike aimed at defeating the Mahdi Army under the control of Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf, Diwaniyah, Al Kut and Karbala. The major American unit involved was the 37th Armor Regiment of 1st Armored Division. The operation was launched in April 2004, and after intense urban warfare which involved Mahdi militiamen taking refuge in mosques, coalition forces had defeated the Mahdi army by June and had forced a cease-fire with al-Sadr.
The 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit is one of seven Marine Expeditionary Units currently in existence in the United States Marine Corps. The Marine Expeditionary Unit is a Marine Air Ground Task Force with a strength of about 2,200 personnel. The MEU consists of a command element, a reinforced infantry battalion, a composite helicopter squadron and a logistics combat element. The 11th MEU is currently based out of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California with headquarters in Camp Del Mar.
The 2004 Iraq spring fighting was a series of operational offensives and various major engagements during the Iraq War. It was a turning point in the war; the Spring Fighting marked the entrance into the conflict of militias and religiously based militant Iraqi groups, such as the Shi'a Mahdi Army.
The 2004 Kufa mosque bombing occurred on August 26, 2004 when the main mosque in Kufa, Iraq was hit by a barrage of mortar rounds.
The 2007 al-Askari mosque bombing occurred on 13 June 2007 at around 9 am local time at one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, the al-Askari Mosque, and has been attributed by Iran to the Iraqi Baath Party. While there were no injuries or deaths reported, the mosque's two ten-story minarets were destroyed in the attacks. This was the second bombing of the mosque, with the first bombing occurring on 22 February 2006 and destroying the mosque's golden dome.
The Battle of Basra began on 25 March 2008, when the Iraqi Army launched an operation to drive the Mahdi Army militia out of the southern Iraqi city of Basra. The operation was the first major operation to be planned and carried out by the Iraqi Army since the invasion of 2003.
The 2008 Iraq spring fighting was a series of clashes between the Mahdi Army and allies and the Iraqi Army supported by coalition forces, in southern Iraq and parts of Baghdad, that began with an Iraqi offensive in Basra.
The siege of Sadr City was a blockade of the Shi'a district of northeastern Baghdad carried out by US and Iraqi government forces in an attempt to destroy the main power base of the insurgent Mahdi Army in Baghdad. The siege began on 4 April 2004 – later dubbed "Black Sunday" – with an uprising against the Coalition Provisional Authority following the government banning of a newspaper published by Muqtada Al-Sadr's Sadrist Movement. The most intense periods of fighting in Sadr City occurred during the first uprising in April 2004, the second in August the same year, during the sectarian conflict that gripped Baghdad in late 2006, during the Iraq War troop surge of 2007, and during the spring fighting of 2008.
Special Groups (SGs) is a designation given by the United States military to the cell-based Shi'a paramilitary organizations operating within Iraq, According to the United States these groups are funded, trained, and armed by the Iranian Quds Force, part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq, also known as the Khazali Network, is a radical Iraqi Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary organization active in the Iraqi insurgency and Syrian Civil War. During the Iraq War it was known as Iraq's largest "Special Group", and it is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in the 41st, 42nd, and 43rd Brigades, cooperating with the Iraqi government in its fight against ISIS.
The April 2010 Baghdad bombings were a series of bomb attacks in Baghdad, Iraq that killed at least 85 people over two days. Hundreds more were seriously wounded.
The departure of US troops from Iraq in 2011 ended the period of occupation that had begun with the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. The time since U.S. withdrawal has been marked by a renewed Iraqi insurgency and by a spillover of the Syrian civil war into Iraq. By 2013, the insurgency escalated into a renewed war, the central government of Iraq being opposed by ISIL and various factions, primarily radical Sunni forces during the early phase of the conflict. The war ended in 2017 with an Iraqi government and allied victory, however ISIL continues a low-intensity insurgency in remote parts of the country.
Akram Abbas al-Ka'abi is an Iraqi militant leader who is the founder and Secretary-General of Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba (HHN) in Iraq. Kaabi is a U.S.-designated terrorist who is regarded as one of the main operatives of IRGC's Quds Force in Iraq. He has been an ardent supporter and promoter of Iranian influence in Iraq while being the most outspoken critic of American military presence as he seeks to compel U.S. forces to withdraw completely from Iraq.
Saraya al-Salam is an Iraqi Shia militia formed in 2014. They are a part of the Popular Mobilization Forces and are a partial revival of the Mahdi Army. The name Saraya al-Salam means "Peace Brigades", to signify this the militia also uses a dove as a heraldic symbol. The group's name, together with its logo – which features a dove flying in front of an Iraqi flag – reflects Sadr's effort to maintain a peace with both Sunnis and the Iraqi central government. As of 2022, the group's operations are frozen, although it is still active but in smaller scale.
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Muqtada al-Sadr 
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