Word: ites
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Remember this name: Amar Al-Hakim. He is 36 years old, the heir apparent to one of Iraq's two leading Shi'ite dynasties, and a few weeks ago in Ramadi, he did something quite remarkable. He went to meet and make peace with the more than 100 Sunni sheiks who led the movement to kick al-Qaeda in Iraq out of Anbar province. He was accompanied by the leader of his family's militia, the Badr Organization, which was lethally anti-Sunni until recently. The Hakim delegation was ferried to the meeting in Black Hawk helicopters...
...recent weeks, when even Baghdad approached a tolerable level of urban violence and criminality. "And the Ramadi meeting wasn't at all unique," a senior U.S. diplomat told me. "You've had mass meetings of tribal leaders from Anbar and Karbala provinces," which are the Sunni and Shi'ite heartlands, respectively. "The governors of those provinces were literally building trenches on their border, and they are now meeting regularly. You had the highest-ranking Sunni politician in the country, Tariq al-Hashemi, go to Najaf to meet with the leading Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani...
Last week, after two Sunni men were gunned down by Shi'ite militants in the sectarian hotspot of Haswah, near the city of Iskandariyah, Sunni members of a citizens' paramilitary group led Iraqi and U.S. military officials to the main Haswah mosque, where they told officials that the gunmen were celebrating their recent kill. With permission from the highest echelon of the U.S. command and Iraqi government in Baghdad, a specially trained Iraqi Army unit raided the mosque while U.S. forces stood by with additional firepower. The Iraqi soldiers returned with a booty no one had expected: several local commanders...
...deal with terrorists" line of the Bush Administration and early commanders of the U.S. occupation, but quite in keeping with the spirit of a new counterinsurgency strategy taking shape across Iraq that has not only reached out to insurgents but enlisted them in a fight against Shi'ite and Sunni radicals alike...
...troops in the area were led to a cache of more than 100 copper disks, the deadly projectile component of EFPs. Military officials say it was one of the largest EFP caches found in more than a year and another big dent in the local network of Shi'ite militants bent on planting them. In a region where troops say they often take one step forward for every two steps back, another step forward is worthy of note. Either way, it's a deadly dance in a place where the music never seems to stop...