Word: ite
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...remains unclear just where the agitation began, or when. But by early last week it had spread through the Shi'ite heartland, which was ripe for trouble. The Shi'ites constitute 55% of Iraq's population of 19 million, but the minority Sunnis, who constitute only 20%, including Saddam and nearly all his aides, have long dominated the country politically...
...height of the fighting for Basra, Western intelligence officials say, some 5,000 defectors from the regular army, angered that their leaders had brought them such inglorious defeat, faced 6,000 loyalists from the Republican Guard. The rabble-rousers also included a large number of Shi'ite fundamentalists, some of whom paraded portraits of Mohammed Bakr Hakim, Iraq's leading Shi'ite cleric. Hakim lives in exile in Iran and aims to install a Tehran-like revolutionary government in Baghdad; Iran's President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani last week called on Saddam's regime to "surrender to the will...
...coming bloodbath. Opposition leaders were terrified that Saddam would use chemical weapons against his own people once again. U.S. officials last week warned Iraqi diplomats in Washington and New York against such action. The diplomats said their government had no intention of using gas, but one Shi'ite leader claimed it had already been used...
...even if the allies had had the freedom to maneuver, they lacked the will. "I'm not sure," said Cheney, "whose side you'd want to be on." Not the Shi'ite mullahs, certainly. The West has no interest in seeing Iran II in Iraq; nor do the gulf states, which have their own problems with Shi'ite restiveness. Supporting the Kurds would create a stewpot of problems as well. Turkey, an important constituent in the anti-Saddam team and a NATO member, fears that any gains made by Iraq's Kurds would embolden Turkey's own 8 million-member...
Another danger for Saddam is political unrest caused by Iraq's severe economic crisis. Some experts believe that if protests start in Shi'ite Muslim areas south of Baghdad, it could bring down the regime...