Word: islamists
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...dust settles on post-Saddam's Iraq's first democratic election, the big winners are the Shiite Islamist parties rather than the U.S.-backed interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Indeed, Allawi, whose list gathered just 14 percent of the national vote, appears to have conceded that he's unlikely to keep his job, accepting that Iraq's first democratically elected government will be ?Islamic.? Instead, Allawi is assuming the role of an opposition figure, warning the Shiite victors against drawing too close to Iran or making religion the basis of government. Still, the likely outcome of the political horse-trading...
...lack of a beard, his background as a banker and his modernizing proposals. But some less cautious liberal contenders struck a defiant pose: One candidate boldly proposed legalizing movie theaters and giving women the right to drive cars, earning him a torrent of warnings about Judgment Day from Islamist hardliners. Conservative candidates stressed their credentials as technocrats, but energized supporters with appeals on Islamist websites and open backing from Islamist diehards like Sheikh Salman al Awdah, a onetime Bin Laden ally who argues ?there is no place for secularism in the Muslim world...
...been hard at work for weeks now forging a common negotiating position among Palestinian factions. In what would be a remarkable shift on the part of Hamas - or a realization, like that experienced by the PLO in the 1980s, that the State of Israel is an intractable reality - the Islamist organization has signaled its readiness to accept the principle of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Not that Abbas necessarily expects to cut a deal with Sharon. He has long argued that by launching the armed intifada, the Palestinians squandered the international support, particularly among Western nations...
...presence of 150,000 foreign troops—and their efforts to “pacify” Sunni regions—has only nurtured and emboldened the most violent elements of the resistance, helping them recruit everyone from Iraqi nationalists to Islamist militants in their horrific campaign. If they saw the Americans leave, the first group would likely lay down their arms immediately, while the rest would instantly lose the support they rely...
...Allawi's best bet would be to draw the Kurds into his own bloc. But the Kurds, secular and seperatist, they are hardly natural allies for the moderate Islamist-nationalist UIA list assembled under the auspices of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Still, they may see the Sistani list as a more viable government, if they can strike a deal that gives the Shiites the power they seek in Baghdad in exchange for de facto Kurdish independence in the northern provinces - largely at the expense of Sunni Arabs and ethnic Turkmen in Kirkuk and other contested areas. Ultimately, however, the Kurds...