Word: sectarianism
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...WHAT DOES IT MEAN IF WASHINGTON does become a stage of sectarian conflict after Nov. 7? For one thing, most of Bush's legislative agenda could be bound for gridlock. White House officials still talk hopefully of expanding Bush's No Child Left Behind education legislation. Other issues for which they argue they could get some kind of bipartisan traction include moving toward energy independence, lowering health-care costs and measures to fight terrorism. Bush's advisers even talk of enlisting Democrats for some grand push for entitlement reform, although anything like Bush's disastrous effort to add private accounts...
...atrocities committed by terrorists and sectarian death squads in Iraq weren't bad enough, kidnapping has become one of the country's most common forms of crime since the fall of Saddam Hussein. U.S. officials say that up to 40 people are kidnapped every day, a phenomenon highlighted last week when a U.S. soldier in Baghdad went missing, an apparent abduction victim. With ransoms ranging from a few thousand dollars to more than a million and with the police often unwilling or unable to even register such cases, officials say kidnapping has become an increasingly lucrative business. It helps...
...Waddah overheard the guards talking about the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest sites for Shi'ites. They also spoke of the wave of sectarian violence that followed, with Shi'ite mobs wreaking vengeance on Sunnis. "It sounded like Sunnis were being slaughtered in the streets of Baghdad," Waddah says. "I was worried about my family. They were new to the city and had no influential relatives who could protect them." While waiting to use the toilet over the next few days, the captives whispered rumors of how their Sunni kidnappers were taking revenge...
...waiting turned into weeks, and still there was no ransom demand. Some in the family wondered whether Waddah has been murdered rather than kidnapped. As violence in and around Baghdad escalated, even Haseeba began to lose hope, convinced that her son had become another nameless victim of Iraq's sectarian war. Sunnis were being killed all over the city. Surely there was no hope for Waddah...
...Juan Cole: It's not plausible for them to give up their militias entirely. They have, of course, been willing to see those militias incorporated into state institutions - SCIRI's Badr Brigade has been incorporated into the Interior Ministry forces [in whose uniforms they are accused of sectarian killings], while the Mahdi Army has been drawn into the police force in some parts of the country - but they tend to be incorporated in ways that retain their militia identity. The calculation of the U.S. and Maliki last summer was correct: The militias exist because Shi'ites feel insecure. And that...