Word: itely
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...Sunni-dominated Al-Anbar province. Until now, Sunni politicians have feared economic devastation if Iraq divided into a federation or imploded into disparate ethnic states, since the territory dominated by their ethnic group was thought to be the only one without large reserves of oil. (Both the Shi'ite south and Kurdish north have productive fields.) "The Western desert has lain dormant," says Colin Lothian, senior analyst on Middle East energy for Wood Mackenzie, an international energy research and consultancy. "It's not out of the realm of possibility...
...ite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, who pulled his 32-man delegation from al-Maliki's shaky coalition last week, has opposed the law. So too have several independent politicians. And the Kurdish Regional Government has cooled on the law, arguing that too many of the oil fields will fall under the control of the state-run Iraqi National Oil Company. The KRG's spokesman Khaled Salih says Kurdish politicians told Iraqi officials at the Dubai meeting: "It's not agreed yet." Now, if Sunni areas hold huge untapped oil and gas, it might draw Sunni politicians closer to Baghdad...
...Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political organization, condemned the plan Sunday. Anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose militia is heavily implicated in attacks on Sunni civilians, denounced the idea too. Iraq's Shi'ite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, followed suit Sunday and called for a halt to the construction of the barrier in the Adhamiya district, one of the last remaining Sunni enclaves in Shi'ite east Baghdad...
...walls the American military planned to erect in Baghdad seemed like a simple solution to a deadly problem: Sunni and Shi'ite enclaves would be physically separated, preventing each side's fighters from attacking the other's civilians. But simple solutions tend to fall apart when confronted with Iraq's complicated reality...
...Sunnis have the more obvious cause for alarm. The Sunni residents of Adhamiya are already prisoners in their own neighborhood. Leaving the neighborhood necessitates traveling through Shi'ite territory, so few take the risk. Meanwhile access to basic goods and services is slowly being choked off as the area comes under frequent mortar attack. With this ancient Sunni community slowly being strangled to death, its residents were unlikely to rejoice at the prospect of being surrounded, "for their protection," by a 15-foot-high barrier of gray concrete slabs...