Word: sectarianism
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...basic problem of Iraq right now is ethnic and sectarian rivalry and competition. And there is a continuing effort on the part of the terrorists - in particular, the Zarkawi group - to pro-voke civil war. The attacks on Samarra pushed the country in that direction. But I think the Iraqi leaders decided not to go that way and stopped rather than move towards a civil war further. The effort by the terrorists to provoke a civil war continues. But the answer to the challenge of Iraq, given the ethnic and sectarian rivalry, is the establishment of a national-unity government...
...like to discuss what a national-unity government would mean. What are the forces that should constitute this government? On that, there is broad agreement -not unanimous, but broad agreement - that it should be formed from the Shi'ite alliance, the Kurdish alliance, the Sunni Arab alliance and across sectarian groups, [the secular block] led by Iyad Allawi. The second issue is that there has to be a process for decision-making in which these forces could participate and that's important for a variety of reasons. There is a strong polarization along ethnic and sectarian lines that indicates...
KHALILZAD DIDN'T PLAN TO BE there. He became ambassador to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and built a close friendship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, helping negotiate deals with ethnic and sectarian groups so numerous it would make an Iraqi's head spin. "Zal had definitively been promised that if he agreed to go to Kabul, he would be given a more relaxed and family-friendly assignment thereafter," says Benard. But last June, with the U.S. struggling to contain the insurgency in Iraq, President Bush sent Khalilzad to Baghdad. It made sense: Khalilzad...
...disgruntlement with Khalilzad reached a peak in late February, when he complained about sectarian abuses by al-Jaafari's Shi'ite government. His thinly disguised target was the Interior Ministry, which Sunnis say employs Shi'ite death squads. Shi'ites interpreted Khalilzad's comments as a threat to their influence. "They thought I was trying to give [the ministry] to the Sunnis," Khalilzad says. And justified or not, some Shi'ites say Khalilzad's slapdown contributed to the rage that erupted after the Feb. 22 terrorist bombing of the sacred Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, which left hundreds dead...
...spent with the ambassador as he shuttles across Baghdad reveals just how hard it will be for him to forge compromise. At his meeting with al-Hakim, the SCIRI leader's aides nod when Khalilzad says the political deadlock is creating a vacuum that encourages sectarian impulses. But al-Hakim wants to talk instead about the discovery last week of a bus containing the corpses of 18 men, many of them clearly garroted. News reports said the men were Sunnis; al-Hakim says they were Shi'ites. Khalilzad is caught off guard. "The BBC said the men were Sunnis...