Word: sectarian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...down on the militias and death squads tearing the country apart. But Baker reportedly opposed that proposal, stressing, among other factors, a common refrain of President Bush's: as David Sanger summed it up in The New York Times, "any firm deadline would be an invitation to insurgents and sectarian groups to bide their time until the last Americans were withdrawn, then seek to overthrow the government." And so the timetable idea was dropped...
...anything, a pause in fighting would pose a greater threat to the long-term prospects of the insurgents and militias than it would to the government. The combatants in the civil war feed off the fears of ordinary Iraqis, who look to the armed groups for protection against their sectarian rivals. If the violence were to suddenly stop, the influence of those groups would plummet. And that would give the U.S. and Iraq's Arab neighbors the opportunity to flood the country with reconstruction aid and stand up an army ready to defend a government in Baghdad. By the time...
...rhetoric was so far removed from reality it sometimes seemed almost deliberately ironic. Bush pronounced al-Maliki "the right guy for the job," claiming the Iraqi leader had made great efforts to reconcile sectarian groups responsible for the deaths of thousands of Iraqis in recent weeks. In truth, the Prime Minister has done little to bridge the sectarian gap; if anything, he has occasionally contributed to widening the chasm. Many in Baghdad also found some unintended black humor in Bush's description of al-Maliki as "a strong leader." After all, just the previous day, a leaked memo from National...
...Iraqis that things are about to get better anytime soon. But if there was a silver lining in the gloom - and you had to strain your eyes to find it - it was in President Bush's unambiguous thumbs-down to the idea of separating Iraq into three ethnic or sectarian enclaves. Partition may be an intriguing parlor game for foreign-policy wonks in Washington, but like most theoretical plans for Iraq, it was never likely to survive direct contact with ground realities. Save a few fringe figures and Al-Qaeda in Iraq, most Iraqis want their country intact, and will...
...well as Amman and Washington - suggest that as bad as things are in Iraq, they are only going to get worse. Events over the last couple of days have made the following grimly clear: President Bush can't rely on Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to stop the sectarian warfare, according to Bush's own national security adviser. Al-Maliki is beholden to arch-sectarian Moqtada al-Sadr, who this week showed his clout by ordering his minions out of the fragile coalition government. And if the climax of this cliffhanger was supposed to be former Secretary of State...