Word: sectarian
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Sahar Ashour Nema has been visited twice by Iraq's sectarian demons. Two years ago, her husband, a Shi'ite laborer, was murdered by Sunni militants, who decapitated him, then hacked his body to pieces and set ablaze his small mobile home in western Baghdad. Before taking her children with her to live in her father's home in nearby al-Haswa, Nema returned one last time to their old neighborhood--just long enough to collect her husband's charred body parts in a plastic bag so he could have a decent burial. Her Sunni neighbors were impassive. "Nobody offered...
Most Iraqis cling to hope that the country won't descend into all-out civil war. But the sectarian violence that has racked the country over the past two weeks has upended the lives of thousands of families like Nema's, forcing them to leave their homes and changing the complexion of cities like Baghdad, perhaps forever. Across the capital, mixed neighborhoods have undergone the equivalent of wholesale religious cleansing, as Sunnis and Shi'ites have sought safety in their sectarian communities. In areas where Shi'ites and Sunnis once lived in tolerance, even harmony, the two sides are drawing...
...underscored the need for indigenous units who would be willing to intervene in such a civil conflict, they have also made any such withdrawal an even greater challenge. The strategy for drawing down U.S. force levels, after all, has been predicated on replacing them with Iraqi units. But the sectarian upsurge has also highlighted the troubling extent to which many of the men in the most capable Iraqi security units remain loyal to ethnic and sectarian agendas. Shi'ite leader al-Hakim, for instance, had initially blamed the Samarra bombing in part on Khalilzad's pressure on his party...
...Still, Khalilzad may have an overly rosy view of things. There have yet to be any indications of a new willingness among those same officials to make the real compromises needed to break the deadlock over forming a government of national unity. And the sectarian upsurge appears to have boosted the political momentum of forces outside of Khalilzad's sphere of influence, foremost among them the firebrand Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr...
...essence, Sadr appears to be betting that Shi'ite and Sunni Iraqis mistrust the U.S. more than they mistrust each other, a not unreasonable assumption. Indeed, both Shi'ites and Sunnis on the streets tend to blame the U.S. presence for the mounting sectarian discord; opinion polls have long found a majority of Iraqis wanting Coalition forces to leave. The parties of the dominant Shi'ite alliance are formally committed to a similar position, although in reality they're in no hurry to face the security consequences of a hasty U.S. departure. Still, Sadr's game plan may include championing...