Word: sectarianism
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...policy in Iraq depends largely on the ability of the elected government to forge a national unity compact that can end both the insurgency and the sectarian violence that continues to claim hundreds of casualties every week. And right now the signs of that government being able to achieve that goal are not looking good...
...reported arrests of senior police officers that followed - as well as sharply divergent accounts by different cabinet ministers of how many people had been kidnapped, how many had been released, and whether any had been killed or tortured - suggested that different arms of the government (often broken down on sectarian lines) are not reading off the same script...
...case the politicians needed reminding of the urgency of turning things around in Iraq, two of the nation's most senior intelligence officers on Tuesday delivered a gloomy assessment of the war. General Michael Hayden, director of the CIA, warned at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the sectarian violence between Iraq's Shia and Sunnis has gotten so out of hand it "now presents the greatest immediate threat to Iraq's stability and future." And the Pentagon's top spy, Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, testified with Hayden and was equally downbeat. "Although a significant...
...Hayden, however, has seen little that has pleased him the past eight months. In fact, he concluded, Iraq has been going steadily downhill since last February when the bombing of the al-Askari Shi'ite shrine in Samarra sparked a frenzy of sectarian killing. Hayden ticked off the problems: "There remains in Iraq today an active insurgency, a broad al-Qaeda offensive targeting us and Iraqis, criminality and lawlessness on a broad scale, rival militias competing for power...
...Political leaders have been unwilling or unable to rein in militias or death squads. Meanwhile, Iran "is stoking violence" and al-Qaeda "continues to foment sectarian violence," he warned. "Even if the central government gains broader support from Iraq's communities, implementing the reforms needed to improve life for all Iraq will be extremely difficult...