Word: baathist
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...Until now, Americans have been told that those opposing the U.S. presence in Iraq are either foreign terrorists linked to al-Qaeda, or else Baathist desperadoes trying in vain to restore the old regime. But the Fallujah killings blasted a hole in the administration's standard explanations for ongoing violence in Iraq. The mob that danced around the charred bodies of the four Americans were very ordinary looking young Iraqis, making no effort to hide their identity despite the presence of numerous cameras - not exactly the behavior of Baathists or foreigners plotting furtively in the shadows. But then, Fallujah...
...want a glimpse into the challenge the U.S. faces as it tries to prevent Iraq from coming apart, consider the plight of Salim Izzat. Five months before the U.S. invasion last March, Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime ordered Izzat to vacate his farm outside the northern-Iraq town of Dibagan, 50 miles southeast of Mosul. The command was part of the regime's systematic, 15-year-long campaign to populate the predominantly Kurdish reaches of northern Iraq with ethnic Arabs. Kurds like Izzat were pushed out of their homes by force; dissenters, including Izzat's brother, were executed...
Still, U.S. officials are worried that an election as early as this summer would give Iraq's Shi'ites, who make up 60% of the population but were repressed by Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime, a tremendous edge. With Saddam's Baathist structures gone, the Sunnis are disorganized and demoralized. Shi'ite religious institutions, by contrast, are strong. Among some in Washington, that raises the specter of a replay of the 1979 Iranian revolution, in which fundamentalist Shi'ite clerics took charge of the government, which proved hostile...
...less lethal with him in captivity. According to some U.S. and Iraqi officials, that is in part because of the rising influence and activity of Islamic extremists. These militants are assuming a leadership role in the anti-American insurgency as the ranks of Iraqis loyal to the secular Baathist regime dwindle...
...jihadists are stirring up those sentiments in the one place that generally remains off limits to the Americans: the mosque. U.S. and Iraqi officials say a worrying number of mosques are providing support for insurgents, whether jihadist, Baathist or both. Early this month U.S. and Iraqi troops raided Ibn Taymiyah mosque in Baghdad, arresting the mosque's imam and 31 suspected militants and uncovering a cache of weaponry. Still, according to a senior military official, U.S. forces in Iraq have conducted relatively few raids inside mosques for fear of offending ordinary Iraqis. Says the official: "You could win the battle...