Word: sectarianism
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...Papua on election day. Voters in the easternmost province, where separatist sentiment also runs high, went to the polls despite the violence that included attacks on a police station and the burning of a building. "We're seeing the Indonesian voter demonstrating that it is a rational voter, shunning sectarian issues," says Robin Bush, country representative for the Asia Foundation. "This election was a clear statement that they want progress...
...fragile peace have clearly studied their history books. A similar campaign of low-level, civic disruption by the Provisional IRA in the late 1960s and 1970s led to the mass deployment of British troops on Northern Irish streets and triggered one of the bloodiest periods in the 30-year sectarian conflict known as the Troubles. (See pictures of new hope for Belfast...
...just old sectarian politics that's driving the upsurge in violence. In fact, according to some commentators, ideology has little to do with it. "There is a direct link between these activities and organized crime both North and South [of the Irish border]", says Tom Conlan, security analyst with The Irish Times, who claims the weapons used by the Real IRA to murder the two British soldiers in County Antrim last month were supplied by Dublin drug gangs. "[The dissidents] are cynically manipulating latent republican feeling to cover their own criminal activities and to sustain them...
...government has few good options to counter this threat. If it moves to purge suspect elements within the Sahwa, it could face a violent backlash and claims of sectarian prejudice, deepening already tense ties with the Sunni community. The weekend's spasm of street violence in Fadhil, a central Baghdad neighborhood once completely under al-Qaeda control, may be a harbinger of things to come. Iraqi forces clashed with members of the Sahwa movement in the neighborhood after they moved in to arrest its leader Adil al-Mashhadani. Fierce fighting ensued, leaving four dead. Mashhadani was detained on a litany...
There are risks besides an all-out confrontation. The fledgling Iraqi security forces could fracture along ethnic or sectarian lines. A Kurdish battalion commander and 200 of his Kurdish soldiers stationed in Nineveh deserted en masse last summer during the Khanaqin standoff, taking their weapons with them into Erbil, says Vines. At the same time, a Kurdish brigade stationed in Diyala refused orders from the central government, according to other sources...