Word: baathist
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...response of Iraqi insurgents to the deaths of Uday and Qusay has been to escalate their attacks on U.S. forces. But the question of whether these are a Baathist swan song or part of an expanding guerrilla war will only be answered in the months ahead, particularly if Saddam is taken out of the equation in short order. U.S. analysts certainly believe that remnants of Saddam's regime are playing a central role in the resistance, but it's not clear whether they're dependent on the same central authority that held them together before the regime was toppled. There...
...attacks have occurred in the "Sunni triangle" stretching north from Baghdad, however, signifies that the insurgency has a distinct social base. Sunni Arabs constitute 15 percent of Iraq's population, but they have dominated its politics and economy for most of the past century. Many of them were not Baathists, but as Iraq expert Professor Juan Cole, of the University of Michigan, notes, the Sunnis enjoyed a privileged status under Baathist rule equivalent to that of white South Africans under apartheid - the state always rewarded them with a disproportionate allocation of resources and opportunities. The onset of democracy in Iraq...
...regime on many Iraqis. Their deaths mark the sharpest signal yet that Saddam isn't coming back, and that he will eventually be found by the Americans. And that message will boost the confidence of those Iraqis inclined to work with the occupation authority, while demoralizing Baathist resistance fighters by eliminating two of their key political leaders and warning them that the capability of U.S. intelligence to detect Baathist leaders is growing. Equally important, it will provide an important morale-booster to U.S. troops straining under the weight of an often thankless mission...
...their own attacks. Sabotage attacks on oil pipelines reveal an acute awareness of Iraq's points of vulnerability, while Wednesday's firefights that killed six and wounded eight British troops mark an even more worrisome development. While attacks on U.S. forces had been mostly confined to the Sunni Baathist heartland, the Britons were attacked in the overwhelmingly Shiite region around Basra. It could be that such attacks were mounted by the same largely Sunni groups that are harassing U.S. forces in Baghdad and to the north - after all, Saddam's (mostly Sunni) Fedayeen were active as far south as Basra...
...condemned the Sunni insurgency, denouncing it as "premature" and urging their followers instead to press peacefully for an early U.S. departure. As much as they chafe against the idea of a long-term U.S. occupation, the Shiites are unlikely to make common cause with a rebellion by the same Baathists that had routinely butchered previous Shiite uprisings. Without the support of the Shiites and the Kurds, the rebellion has a decidedly low ceiling - it can harass the U.S. forces and make their stay uncomfortable and costly, but it is unlikely ever to muster the national challenge that confronted...