Word: iraq
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...still violent mixed but predominantly Sunni province. Its victory meant a realignment of power away from the minority Kurds who held disproportionate sway due to a Sunni electoral boycott in 2005. However, it has also set the stage for a showdown between the two groups. (See an analysis of Iraq's future...
...Even as Iraq's Sunni-Shi'ite divide appears to be tenuously mending, another seam in the country's patchwork multiethnic and sectarian society is on the verge of unraveling. Territorial disputes between Arabs and Kurds - in the provinces of Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala - now pose a serious risk of violence...
...recent months, long-standing hostility between the two communities has escalated, whipped up by resurgent Arab secular nationalism. At the federal level, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has repeatedly said he wants to strengthen Baghdad's hand at the expense of Iraq's 18 provinces, including Kurdistan - the semiautonomous three-province Kurdish region in the north - much to the chagrin of the federalist-minded Kurds. At the provincial level, newly empowered hard-line Sunni groups like al-Hadba in Mosul, Nineveh's capital, are preparing to expand their political clout. (See a TIME photographer's diary of the Iraq conflict...
What is clear is that there's a new order in Iraq, an invigorated Arab nationalism that is increasingly pushing back against federalist-minded groups like the country's Kurds. Will the Kurds concede that they may not be in a position to get everything they want, especially regarding territory? Or will they respond militarily? "It's not a simple issue," says Rwandzi, the Kurdish member of parliament. "It's very sensitive and needs to be dealt with seriously." That much at least, Iraq's Arabs and Kurds can agree...
...month-by-month record of America's six years in Iraq...