Word: sectarianism
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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw may still exemplify the special relationship that has traditionally existed between the U.S. and Great Britain, practically finishing each other's sentences as they trouble-shoot their way through Iran?s nuclear brinksmanship, Israeli-Palestinian hostilities or sectarian tensions in Iraq. But as the two learned on Friday, a vocal part of the British people don't necessarily share a sense of kinship with their brethren ? or at least their brethrens' elected government ? across the Atlantic...
...hostage Jill Carroll's unexpected release in Baghdad on Thursday was a welcome departure from the usual round of bloody bad news coming out of Iraq these days. But the circumstances of her release can hardly be divorced from the sectarian strife and political jockeying that is currently gripping the country. It didn't seem to be an accident, after all, that Carroll, looking hale and well, was turned over to the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group, whose secretary general, Tariq al-Hashimi, greeted the freelance journalist for the Christian Science Monitor with gifts, including a plaque with...
...matter how bad the sectarian violence gets in Iraq, politicians in Washington love to tout the flowering of democracy in Saddam Hussein's former dictatorship. But not all the fruits of Iraqi democracy are to Washington's taste - the Bush Administration has reportedly told the Shi'ite bloc that dominates Iraq's elected legislature that President Bush opposes its nomination of Ibrahim al-Jaafari to a second term as Prime Minister...
...Mindful of Sunni concerns and the danger of sectarian warfare, the U.S. has begun to act against Shi'ite militias, particularly those accused of abuses. But the Shi'ite leaders see the militias as their best defense against the Sunni insurgents, and are not in any mood to disband them. In the wake of last weekend's controversial joint U.S.-Iraqi hostage rescue, Shi'ite politicians briefly broke off talks over a new government; they claimed the raid was a massacre of innocent civilians praying at a mosque, while the U.S. and Iraqi commanders said it wasn't a mosque...
...accept the argument that the escalating sectarian violence in Iraq has nothing to do with 24 years of Sunni oppression of Shi'ites and Kurds under Saddam but is the result of the incompetent U.S. invasion. What about the passion to avenge atrocities committed by the former regime? The U.S. can't be blamed for that. Still, Iraqis are probably better off with a dictator, somebody to force them to get along. They are a people who thrive on dictatorships and blood feuds. Michael Klena Baltimore, Maryland...