Word: sectarian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...question now is how that threat will be kept under control. American troop levels in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq will return this year to about the same level as 2006 - the year that saw the worst of the country's sectarian violence. Helping to fill that void, supposedly, will be former members of the Sunni insurgency: thousands have become U.S.-paid counter-insurgents and, in some cases, members of the Iraqi government security forces. Unlike the mostly Shi'ite Iraqi army and police, these Sunnis have credibility in their towns and neighborhoods and have proven effective in fighting...
...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. In the 2005 elections, many Sunnis across Iraq simply did not participate, a defiance that left them dejected and marginalized - and susceptible to the embrace of insurgent...
...makeshifts camps for the displaced. "But I will never stop helping whoever is in need, even if it is going to cost my life, because I know I'm doing the right thing." While she is Shi'ite, as is most of Karada, she describes herself as secular, not sectarian, and as an Iraqi first and foremost...
...left to fend for themselves in what remains one of the world biggest humanitarian crises. A Shi'ite, Hamadi was working as a farmhand in Samarra four years ago when he began getting threats from Sunni militants in the area. Several of his friends had already been murdered in sectarian violence, he said. So he decided to move his wife and seven children out. They headed to Baghdad, where they had no family who might help them. Arriving in the city, they looked around for areas where they might settle as squatters. "The best thing for them...
...Many in Iraq had feared that Sadr would nix the cease-fire, a move likely to set off another round of sectarian violence and reverse many of the gains of the U.S. troop surge. But U.S. officials had expected that Sadr would maintain the pause, which has been a major factor in bringing down the overall level of violence in Iraq. Sadr had sent some signals to the Americans suggesting he was likely to extend the cease-fire. And U.S. officials, such as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, believe that the Shi'ite firebrand may be changing...