Word: sectarianism
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Even as Iraq's Sunni-Shi'ite divide appears to be tenuously mending, another seam in the country's patchwork multiethnic and sectarian society is on the verge of unraveling. Territorial disputes between Arabs and Kurds - in the provinces of Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala - now pose a serious risk of violence...
...Iraqi men carried three national identification cards - one listing their name as Omar (a predominantly Sunni name), another as Ali (predominantly Shi'ite) and a third as Ammar (which can be either). Still, few families have trickled back to the homes they fled in areas that witnessed the fiercest sectarian cleansing by Sunni or Shi'ite militias. Can families forgive neighbors who may have directly or indirectly killed their loved ones...
...good news is that the ghost of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal seems to have been laid to rest. The bad news is that detainee families from across the sectarian spectrum don't trust their government. Salam Baten al-Attiya, 30, a Shi'ite from Sadr City, was at Bucca last week to visit his brother Ali, who was picked up by U.S troops on suspicion of being a member of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. "My brother has been here for a year and a month; keep him here for another year and a month...
...what happened today will not undermine overall security improvements." But Iraq is by no means out of the woods. Increasingly acrimonious divisions between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his expanding list of political rivals could deepen as the national elections slated for December approach. The temperature of intra-sectarian politics, between rival Shi'ite and Sunni groups respectively, is also bound to rise in the coming months. Although January's provincial elections went off without a hitch, there's more at stake in the national polls, which will determine the next parliament and government. They'll also...
...number of so-called dissident republicans - hardliners who oppose the power-sharing government between Northern Ireland's Protestant and Catholic political parties. The 'Real IRA' was also responsible for the Omagh bomb which claimed 29 lives in 1998 - the bloodiest atrocity in Northern Ireland's 30-year sectarian conflict...