Word: ites
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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What's behind the rift? Even though some Iraqi insurgent groups have cooperated with jihadist fighters to battle U.S. troops, insurgent leaders say they have grown sick of al-Qaeda's killing innocent Iraqi Shi'ites, whom al-Zarqawi considers infidels. Cracks in al-Qaeda's alliance with the Iraqi groups became more pronounced after the Dec. 15 election. Al-Zarqawi saw the poll as a detour from his goal of turning Iraq into a base from which al-Qaeda could spread terrorism throughout the Middle East and Europe. Many Sunni resistance groups have a narrower focus: ridding Iraq...
Since then, the fissures between the nationalists and al-Zarqawi have widened. U.S. political and military officers persuaded some Sunni tribal chiefs to send their youths into the security forces to ensure that Sunnis-not Shi'ite outsiders-would command their cities' police. But in recent meetings with various insurgent groups, says a nationalist field commander near Ramadi, al-Zarqawi's lieutenants made it clear that any Iraqi who joined the security forces was considered the enemy, thus drawing a battle line between the jihadis and their former comrades. In Latifiya, outside Baghdad, al-Zarqawi's fighters pressed Sunnis...
...body armor (when available) and shelter behind high blast walls, their British counterparts were patrolling Basra in soft caps and smilingly accepting cups of tea from roadside vendors. This bonhomie was claimed to be the result of that superior understanding of Iraqi culture. Never mind that managing mostly Shi'ite Basra was a picnic compared to running the much more heterogeneous and volatile Baghdad...
...went downhill from there, to the point where the British are just as unwelcome in the Shi'ite south as the Americans are in the Sunni Triangle. An opinion poll conducted shortly before the Dec 15 elections showed that Basrans are overwhelmingly hostile toward the British. So how come the British suffer so few casualties, as compared to the Americans? That's mainly because, unlike the Sunni insurgents who attack the Americans in and around Baghdad, the Shi'ite militias in the south already wield political power - they may resent the British presence, but it doesn't stop them from...
...These days, Basra is practically run by Shi'ite militias, with the British only intervening when their own soldiers get into trouble - as they did last fall, when two soldiers were "arrested" by militiamen, requiring the British to mount a rescue operation. I have not been to Basra for some time, but friends there routinely report instances of British soldiers behaving in a hostile manner, even with those once-friendly tea vendors...