Word: sectarianism
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...Rock and freedom - if not necessarily sex and drugs - got a big boost in Lebanon in 2005, during what outsiders called the Cedar Revolution, when huge crowds gathered in central Beirut to demand an end to the Syrian occupation and an end to the country's sectarian divisions. But the creative and intellectual frenzy that accompanied the Syrian withdrawal was cut short after the country's ruling sectarian political class co-opted the Cedar Revolution, and turned Lebanon into battlefield between regional superpowers. Spurred by last summer's war with Israel and by the current struggle between Iran...
...spokesman, known only as Abu Hala, said the Ba'ath leadership under Saddam's deputy, Izzat al-Douri, were "more than willing to work with Allawi, because we see him as a nationalist and Iraqi patriot, and not a sectarian figure." He said the party didn't agree with all of Allawi's policies when he headed a transitional Iraqi government in 2004, but "we have no doubt that he would represent the interests of Iraq, not of Shi'ites or Sunnis or any other group...
...involved than who was. The agreement didn't include representatives from the bloc loyal to Shi'ite politician and militia chieftain Moqtada al-Sadr. A senior Western diplomat earlier this month praised Maliki for distancing himself from Sadr, widely viewed as the Shi'ite leader most responsible for sectarian violence, but American officials are well aware that Sadr and his followers cannot simply be marginalized...
...another blow to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, Iraq's former interim leader, Ayad Allawi, has announced that he plans to return to Baghdad to do what the current Prime Minister has not: rid the government of sectarian bias and bring violence under control...
Days of closed-door meetings have ensued and are expected to continue through the week, perhaps longer. At bottom the issue is Maliki's inability thus far to forge a compromise with Sunni factions, who accuse Maliki, with good reason, of pursuing a sectarian agenda. But the prospects for success of the talks are dim. No signs of compromise have emerged despite days of meetings. And if Maliki's government remains shunned by Sunni leadership when the talks finally end, the political reconciliation the surge was meant to spur will have gone backward, not forward...