Word: shied
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There is an old Arabic proverb: "My brother and I against my cousin, but my cousin and I against the stranger." It didn't hold true in Iraq for long. Three years after the 2003 U.S. invasion, Sunni brothers and their Shi'ite cousins were slaughtering one another while also fighting against the American stranger. The U.S. is now winding down its mission and preparing to withdraw, but has Iraq's family feud been settled...
Some people suggest that Iraq's various rival factions are just lying low, waiting for the Americans to depart before renewing their armed struggles against one another. There has long been rivalry among Shi'ite parties for supremacy within their community as well as a parallel intra-Sunni battle. Elections are now playing a role in this political drama. January's provincial polls, for example, dealt a devastating blow to religious and federalist-minded parties like the Shi'ite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. They were firmly repudiated in favor of secular, nationalist groups. But will this resurgent nationalism carry through...
Still, that's not good enough for some Iraqis, especially Sunnis worried about their co-religionists, who make up 80% of Bucca's detainee population. The Tawafuk Front, the largest Sunni parliamentary bloc with 44 of the legislature's 275 seats, says it doesn't trust the Shi'ite-led government and wants all of the detainees immediately released, even "the minority" they acknowledge might be al-Qaeda members. "Even if you released an al-Qaeda emir [leader], he won't be able to wreak havoc in the same way he did three years ago," says Omar Almashhadani, a spokesman...
...good news is that the ghost of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal seems to have been laid to rest. The bad news is that detainee families from across the sectarian spectrum don't trust their government. Salam Baten al-Attiya, 30, a Shi'ite from Sadr City, was at Bucca last week to visit his brother Ali, who was picked up by U.S troops on suspicion of being a member of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. "My brother has been here for a year and a month; keep him here for another year and a month...
...Wael Abdel-Latif al-Fadel, a Shi'ite parliamentarian and former judge, isn't optimistic about al-Zaidi's chances of prevailing on appeal. "The ruling is in line with Iraqi law. George Bush was visiting Iraq as a head of state," he said. "He should have been treated with the Arab hospitality that our traditions dictate, not the actions of Muntazer al-Zaidi...