Word: ites
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Administration claims that Iran has been supplying arms to Iraq's Sunni insurgency have never made any sense. Coming soon after Washington initially accused Tehran of arming Shi'ite militias, they have seemed like a weak attempt to remake its case tying the country to attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq - the vast majority of which are carried out by Sunni, not Shi'a, forces...
...brutal slaying of two young Sunni Muslims in what appears to have been an act of tribal revenge by a Shi'ite clan has reminded Lebanon of the deadly passions that can be unleashed by the bitter public feuds of their politicians. The kidnapping, torture and murder of Ziad Ghandour, 12, and Ziad Qabalan, 25, is the latest act of sectarian violence that has left many fearful for the future, even as Lebanon's chastened political leaders scramble to unite in condemning the killings...
...Their disappearance - an ominous echo of the kidnappings and murders of the 1975-1990 civil war - triggered a massive police manhunt. The Ghandour and Qabalan families are both connected to the political party of Walid Jumblatt, leader of Lebanon's Druze community and arch-foe of the militant Shi'ite Hizballah. And Lebanese long accustomed to a tradition of clan blood feuds immediately drew attention to the grievance of the Shamas family, a tough Shi'ite clan originally from a village in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, some of whom live in the Ouzai slum quarter of southern Beirut...
...doubtful that any of the same officials would take part in such an exposed activity. Baghdad's sectarian hatreds have seeped inside the walls as well. Fuad Saeed, the Sunni imam of the biggest mosque in the Green Zone, has made gestures of religious unity, handing out to Shi'ite worshippers the coin-size holy clay tablets used by Shi'ites when they pray. He once even prayed with his hands straight down, a distinction the Shi'ites made from the Sunnis more than 1,000 years ago, in front of his congregation. "The words are not important," he says...
...ites are unlikely to buy the American claim that these walls will make it harder for Sunni terrorists to continue their recent wave of car bombings. America lost its credibility on the security issue years ago, and no new strategy will reverse that. As a practical matter, too, it's hard to imagine a few walls would seriously hinder a bombing campaign as deadly as any seen in the city since 2004. Some car bombs are constructed inside Baghdad, but many more are made outside the city in Sunni areas where the Americans have only a small presence...