Word: sectarianism
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...Kurds' most important achievement has been to keep their region free of Iraq's insurgency and sectarian warfare with their army of 70,000 peshmerga soldiers. Not a single American soldier has been killed in Kurdistan since the start of the war in Iraq, and there hasn't been a major terrorist attack in Erbil since June...
...Kirkuk, with its mixed population of Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans, has long had the potential to be a sectarian powder keg. Under Saddam's Baathist regime, the Iraqi government forced out a large number of the city's majority Kurdish population, and resettled the city with Arabs from the south. Now ethnic tensions have flared as Kurds are demanding the return of Kirkuk to their control. The day I visited last month, a series of two car bombs and three roadside bombs killed 18 people. On April 1, at least 15 people died in a suicide truck bombing...
...office of foreign relations, told me that declaring independence would be "political suicide." Just four years since the fall of Saddam, most Kurds may be willing to remain a part of Iraq for now, but few want their destinies to remain tied to a poor, failing state beset by sectarian carnage. Over time, the push for a free and independent Kurdistan may become irresistible. In a bid to manage expectations, the Kurdish leadership has introduced a new slogan, echoed in mosques and newspaper editorials: "Be Grateful." But eventually even gratitude runs...
...Despite its own political troubles and last summer's war with Israel, Lebanon is peaceful in comparison to Iraq. But the Lebanese remain wary of accepting refugees, lest they upset the country's ever-fragile sectarian balance. Lebanon already houses 400,000 permanent Palestinian refugees, some of whom have lived here for almost 60 years without gaining citizenship. Tension over their presence helped trigger the civil war that ran from 1975 to 1990. "In general, every time you have new refugees, no matter what the number, it raises the Palestinian question," says Stephane Jaquemet, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees...
...competition in Beirut. Families had been gathered in front of television sets across Iraq every Friday night for four months cheering on one of their own. Hassoon won the competition with 7 million votes coming in via telephone and text messages from across the Middle East. The cheering crossed sectarian lines. In the northern - and Kurdish - city of Irbil and neighborhoods packed with Iraqi exiles in Amman, families took to the streets, cheering and waving flags...