Word: iraq
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...legacy of postinvasion bloodletting won't go away anytime soon. Almost every family in Iraq has been a victim of some sort of sectarian violence, and thousands of people are still missing. Meanwhile, many of the men and parties responsible for war crimes hold positions of power and are untouchable. "The government tries to stop prosecutions every step of the way, because its hands are dirty too," says Daha Arwai, the head of a Sunni charity that looks after the children and widows of men murdered by sectarian militias. "Ordinary Iraqis now realize that sectarianism was something that was pushed...
...Indeed, Iraq's politicians still play the sectarian card when it suits them. Last month, the Justice and Accountability Commission, a secretive government de-Baathification committee headed by prominent Shi'ite politicians, banned some 500 candidates - most of them Sunni and secular - from running in the parliamentary election, without ever showing any evidence that linked them to the Baath party. Some critics saw the move as a last-minute attempt by al-Maliki's campaign, which had also been running campaign ads showing Saddam-era atrocities against Shi'ites, to reconnect with the Shi'ite political base. The move raised...
...Baathification committee, rescinded its call for a boycott. Most Sunnis have learned the hard way that money, security, jobs and power come from Baghdad, and they now want their leaders to play the game, even if its rules are less favorable. (See pictures of President Obama in Iraq...
...Sunni conflict, tensions now are mounting inside ethnic and sectarian groups. The duopolistic ruling parties of Iraqi Kurdistan find themselves under threat from a breakaway movement - Goran, or "change" - more interested in cleaning up politics in the Kurdistan Regional Government than in accelerating Kurdish autonomy from the rest of Iraq. And there's been plenty of bad blood between al-Maliki and the fundamentalist Shi'ite parties of the Iraqi National Alliance ever since the Prime Minister sent the army to put down Muqtada al-Sadr's militia in Basra...
...Perhaps the biggest possible source of new instability, however, is the unresolved dispute between Kurds and Arabs over Kurdish-populated areas in northern Iraq that remain under the nominal authority of the Baghdad government - none more so than the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Arabs in Baghdad accuse the Kurds of illegally pumping oil and preparing to declare independence, while the Kurds suspect that the next Arab Prime Minister might try to consolidate power in Arab Iraq by taking a hard line against Kurdish separatism...