Word: sectarianism
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...With government supporters urging all Lebanese to go to work as normal, the strike marks a critical test of the relative strength of the protagonists after nearly two months of political gridlock and worsening sectarian tensions...
...want to know whether a surge of U.S. troops in Baghdad will make a difference, listen to Iraqis like taxi driver Ali Mansoor, 38. Last fall Mansoor's neighborhood in central Baghdad, a mixed Shi'ite-Sunni area known as al-Sadoon, became a sectarian killing zone. The streets around his house were the scene of scores of murders and abductions every day. And then, for one week last October, the violence stopped. "There was a big change in the security situation. Everybody noticed," says Mansoor, who asked not to be identified by his real name. "In my area, there...
...troops would have "a green light" to go into the lairs of powerful Shi'ite militias like al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, which until now have been left largely untouched by them. That hands-off policy has turned Sadr City into Baghdad's ground zero: a bristling hothouse of sectarian hatred that exists outside the control of U.S. and Iraqi authorities. The success or failure of the surge may hinge on whether the U.S. can take Sadr City back...
...challenge is enormous. By some estimates, half the daily sectarian attacks in Baghdad flow out of Sadr City. Home to more than 2 million people, the area is a world unto itself. From the air, the perfect street grid makes it seem like a pocket of civic order. But a glance down any street reveals the place for what it is, one of the world's biggest and poorest slums. Clouds of flies roll over roads and alleyways covered in the stench of rotting garbage and open sewers. Houses are so close together in some areas that Mahdi Army fighters...
...Washington has made no secret of its frustration with successive democratically elected governments in Iraq over issues such as national reconciliation and going after sectarian militias. That frustration may only increase as the U.S. in Iraq turns up the heat on Iran...