Word: sectarianism
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...March 7 national elections was that could they could restore faith in the democratic process, and set a new tone of national purpose in Baghdad's corridors of power. The great fear was that without clear winners and losers, the elections could produce months of bitter infighting, heightening the sectarian and ethnic tensions behind the civil war that broke out after the 2005 election. And 10 days after the polls closed, with partial results tricking in and about 80% of the vote counted, Iraq appears destined for more trouble...
...radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr emerging with what may be a kingmaker's share of the vote - that Iraq could see months of deadlock that will do little to boost the country's faith in its politicians. Moreover, the election results have broken down along depressingly familiar sectarian and the ethnic fault lines - although with the authority of the traditional ethnic and sectarian parties weakening in a manner that will further complicate efforts to form a government...
Baqubah, the capital of Iraq's Diyala province, is a largely colorless place except for the winter orange harvest and the hundreds of campaign posters that line its streets. But at least the sectarian battles between Sunnis and Shi'ites that once raged through the city are now confined mostly to the ballot box as Baqubah, along with the rest of Iraq, prepares for national parliamentary elections on March 7. Inside the fortified government headquarters, Diyala's governor, Abdul-Nasser al-Mahdawi, is relatively optimistic that the elections - the fifth poll since the U.S. brought democracy to Iraq - will...
...opened elections to anyone who wants to hold office - rather than letting only the political parties stuff the lists of candidates - anyone and everyone seems to be running for parliament. There are about 6,000 candidates for 325 seats, and some 86 parties taking part in the election. The sectarian and ethnic political parties whose leaders tore the nation apart are still the country's most powerful, but they have joined in loose multiethnic and multisectarian coalitions. "Obviously there are still going to be candidates who just parrot what their leader says, but that's not going...
...reinvented himself as a Shi'ite nationalist allied with the Sadrists. As the co-head of a secretive government de-Baathification committee, Chalabi helped orchestrate the banning of about 500 mostly Sunni candidates from running in the election, a move that revived fears of a return to sectarian violence. "The Americans say they came here to build democracy, but what kind of democracy is this?" asks Saleh al-Mutlaq, the leader of the country's second largest Sunni Muslim party and one of the banned candidates. "The Americans brought Ahmad Chalabi to Iraq. They should solve this problem, or they...