Word: qaeda
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...still far lower than it was one year ago. The problem, however, is not simply lives lost, but also what the slow increase in attacks says about the resiliency of the Sunni insurgency. Battered by Shi'ite militias, the U.S. military and the defection of more moderate insurgents, al-Qaeda in Iraq and other radical insurgent groups are much weaker now than they were just last summer. But, as U.S. officials are quick to acknowledge, they still have the men, the money and the organization to pose a serious threat...
...long-term difficulty for the United States and the Iraqi government is that this suspicion of Iran is not simply a fantasy of radical Sunni insurgents. It is a very real fear of Sunni former insurgents currently cooperating in the fight against al-Qaeda. Former insurgent leaders routinely scorn the Iraqi government's intentions, casting it as a pawn of the Iranians. So, as the Iraqi government strives to reduce violence by improving its relationship with Iran, it may be setting the stage for continued conflict with disaffected Sunnis...
...additional Iraqi army troopers to the area, promising a "decisive battle" that has yet to materialize. But in any case Petraeus and other U.S. commanders believe that efforts to fix Mosul this time are destined to work better, chiefly because nationalist Sunni fighters are rethinking their alliances with al-Qaeda in Iraq and, in some cases, becoming open to reconciliation...
...Sunni Arabs have evolved," Petraeus says. "They realize that al-Qaeda has brought them nothing but indiscriminate violence and bloodshed and in many cases oppressive practices such as forced marriages. And in some cases bizarre practices such as breaking fingers of people who smoke...
...Iraqi security forces is much the same approach used elsewhere in Iraq over the years, with mixed results. Absent, however, is one key aspect that shaped progress in other places over the past year: local volunteer security forces who, in many cases, were nationalist insurgents who broke with al-Qaeda in Iraq. U.S. officials say that strategy won't work in Mosul, because standing up bands of irregulars could inflame existing ethnic and sectarian divisions in the city. So many U.S. military officials see provincial elections as a way to sap the insurgency's strength in Mosul...