Word: sectarianism
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...that an Iraqi Kurdistan would incite its Kurdish population and that access to the area's oil would be lost. Along with Iran and Syria, Turkey might be tempted to exploit internal Kurdish divisions Baghdad With Sunni and Shi'ite living cheek by jowl, partition could lead to widespread sectarian cleansing and more violence for its 6 million residents...
...when he was found in that Tikrit spider-hole. J. Paul Bremer, the American administrator of Iraq, had hoped seeing Saddam on the dock would allow Iraqis to exorcise the demons he had unleashed upon them during his long reign. More recently, as the country descended into a sectarian war, some U.S. and Iraqi officials clung to the hope that the trial would remind Shi'ites and Sunnis how they had once been unified in misery under his rule...
...Instead, the unrelenting sectarian violence in daily Iraqi life soon turned the trial into a televised sideshow. For those who bothered to watch anymore, the sight of Saddam in court sometimes had the exact opposite effect than officials expected - it evoked nostalgia for a time when, under the tyrant's yoke, Shi'ites and Sunnis were not at each other's throat. Although viewership spiked today, interest in the proceedings will quickly subside again...
...What will not subside is the violence. Far from being collective therapy, the trial has only helped widen the sectarian divide. While Shi'ites celebrated the verdict, many of Saddam's fellow Sunnis protested. In his hometown of Tikrit, over 1,000 people staged demonstrations in defiance of the curfew. In Baghdad's mainly Sunni Adhamiya district, several mortars landed near the Abu Hanifa shrine, the most revered Sunni mosque in the country...
...Saddam's defense lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, warned in an open letter to President Bush that "this decision will set the country ablaze again and plunge the entire region into the unknown." However after the verdict al-Dulaimi told the Associated Press that Saddam had urged Iraqis to reject sectarian violence and to "not take revenge" on U.S. forces. Regardless, insurgent groups will undoubtedly up the ante when the curfew ends...