Word: sectarianism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...growing body of evidence that Iraqis aren't ready or willing to perform their appointed tasks. What does that imply for the U.S. military operation and when it might end? Or for the development of an Iraqi polity in which officials and soldiers grant the state?not sectarian or tribal divisions - their primary loyalty? Would it not mean that the very predicates upon which the war depended had collapsed...
...Sectarian outrages like the June 13 attack on the holy Shi'ite shrine in Samarra - the same site that insurgents blew up in February 2006 - have plunged Iraq into civil war. But it is brainy operatives like Abdallah who pose the most consistently lethal threat to U.S. forces. When we met for our second encounter in 15 months, he didn't seem especially worried that a massive U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown had been under way in Baghdad for the past four months - and that one of its aims was to break the back of the IED industry and roll...
...According to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution at the end of May, the number of sectarian murders, carried out mainly by Shi'ite death squads against Sunnis, has risen noticeably in recent weeks after a drop-off that began in the latter part of February. Sectarian deaths are often described as "extra-judicial killings" (EJKs) and involve the abduction, torture and murder of the victim, with the body usually left on the street. In May, says the Brookings report, citing Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace, there were roughly 700 EJKs across Baghdad. While still lower than...
From the beginning, however, the surge strategy relied heavily on the idea that the increased presence of U.S. forces would deter sectarian violence. That worked, for a time. The Mahdi Army, the largest Shi'ite militia, tacitly agreed to suspend its campaign of murder and intimidation against Sunnis as the surge got rolling in March and April. For two months, Shi'ite death squads largely checked themselves, even while Sunni extremists pressed a campaign of bombings that left 617 Iraqis dead in March and 634 dead in April. (In May, the fatalities from bombings fell...
...Bergner says the last of the U.S. surge forces will be in place in about two weeks, adding that it could be up to 60 days before all the forces are fully effective in their areas. That means virtually all of the surge forces have arrived, only to see sectarian violence spreading anew...