Word: shied
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Wednesday's bloodbath in Baghdad is a stark reminder that while the U.S. troop surge into the capital has brought a significant decline in sectarian killings by Shi'ite death squads, the Sunni insurgency and its terror attacks on Shi'ite civilians have continued to take a dreadful toll. More than 150 people were killed Wednesday as explosion after explosion rocked Shi'ite neighborhoods: The attacks left more than 100 workers dead in a Shi'ite neighborhood food market; more than 40 dead at a police checkpoint; and 11 killed in front of a hospital...
...major reason that the sectarian violence levels are down may be that the Shi'ite Mahdi Army, perpetrator of much of the worst sectarian killing, has decided for tactical reasons to lie low. Its leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, and his allies in Iraq's government appear to have decided that they're better off waiting out the U.S. surge rather than trying to fight it head-on. After all, they dominate several of Iraq's key ministries and many of its military and police units. If and when the Americans leave, they hope to be well positioned to pursue their...
...Mahdi Army is also able to use its political clout to insulate it from the worst effects of the troop surge, by pressuring the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to limit how and where American troops operate in Shi'ite areas. When they feel the heat from the Americans, they are able to make life difficult for al-Maliki by precipitating political crises - as they did this week by announcing the withdrawal of their ministers from his cabinet in protest at his failure to demand a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq...
...insurgency has neither a stake in the government nor a single, top-down leadership structure. And, while death squad violence against Sunnis has declined, there is no sign of a corresponding rise in Sunni participation in the political process. The national government and its ministries are still dominated by Shi'ites, who vastly outnumber Sunnis in the Iraqi security forces. For many Sunnis, the Baghdad security plan simply raises the specter of Shi'ite harassment, oppression and murder...
...Parliament, a suicide truck bomb collapsed the Al-Sarafiyah bridge in Baghdad. Some 10 people were killed as their vehicles fell into the Tigris River below. The sagging steel trusses of the bridge, which was built by British engineers over half a century ago to connect the predominantly Shi'ite neighborhood Atafiyah with the Sunni area of Waziriyah, provided another sad reminder to residents of the widening sectarian divisions in the capital...