Word: sectarian
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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...
...Thursday, 32 tribal sheiks from the region - mostly Sunni, but including some Shiites - signed a groundbreaking accord pledging to work together to curb extremism and to shake the sectarian violence that has rent the region since the U.S. forces invaded the country in 2003. The rare gathering at Baghdad's al Rashid Hotel, in the heart of the Green Zone, was the culmination of months of delicate negotiations and a welcome breakthrough for U.S. troops who've been fighting and dying there for the past 14 months. "You know the saying: that all politics is local. Well you really...
...metropolitan Baghdad and includes the violent urban centers of Yusifiyah, Latifiyah and Mahmudiyah. It shares a rough-and-tumble neighborhood with Anbar to the west and Babil to the south. A mixed region of Shi'a and Sunni, city and country, the mostly agricultural region suffers all the sectarian, economic and political woes of the capital. While the region's Sunni and Shi'ite tribes battled each other for land and primacy, they found a common enemy in the U.S. troops stationed there. But that situation changed about four months...
Gradually Shi'ite tribes, themselves tired of the most extreme elements of their own sectarian militias, joined the process. The result was the document signed Thursday, which identified local governance, rule of law, the local economy, "social well being," and security as its main priorities. Wearing tribal robes and head scarves, the 32 sheiks signed the document and shook hands with Iraqi political and military leaders in a grip-and-grin ceremony easily reminiscent of an American college graduation...
Even without these new sectarian elements, clashes between Shi'a factions have made Diwaniyah a recent flashpoint in Iraq even as other areas, most notably cities in Anbar Province, have calmed down. The local government and security forces of Diwaniyah are largely controlled by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and its armed wing, the Badr Corps, who are challenged almost daily in the streets by members of the rival Jaish al Mahdi, the militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al Sadr. (The SIIC was formerly known as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, with the initials SCIRI.) While...