Word: bridgees
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Tragedy can divide, and it can unite. In the first hours after the stampede that killed more than 1,000 Shi'ite pilgrims in Baghdad last Wednesday, many of the survivors reflexively blamed Sunni terrorists. Surely, they reasoned, it must have been a Sunni agent provocateur who had started the...
But as the day wore on, it became clear that the tragedy had more to do with inadequate policing and haphazard crowd control than with sectarian animosities. If anything, many Shi'ites said, the Sunnis behaved honorably, both before and after the tragedy. After all, over a million Shi'ite...
The succor was as surprising as it was welcome. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Adhamiya has turned into a safe haven for Sunni insurgents, earning the nickname "Baghdad's Fallujah." There's little love lost between Adhamiya and Sadr City, the giant Shi'ite slum whose residents made up...
Alas, the cessation of sectarian hostilities was too good to last. A day after the tragedy, a brief gun battle broke out between Iraqi security forces on the bridge and some Sunni insurgents in Adhamiya. And al-Qaeda's Iraqi offshoot, led by Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, claimed credit for...
But by the evening, as Baghdad residents absorbed the enormity of the tragedy, the sectarian sensibilities faded as many began to blame the Shia-dominated Iraqi government for failing to anticipate the numbers of pilgrims and provide for adequate security and crowd-control. "Everybody knew there would be more than...