Word: shied
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...associated with the Revolutionary Guards specifically, as the prime source of trouble in its neighborhood. U.S. officials now routinely blame Iran for many of the attacks on U.S. forces inside Iraq - despite limited evidence to back the claim - and accuse it of destabilizing the Iraqi government by supporting radical Shi'ite militia. The Administration also insists that Iran has been working to destabilize the Karzai government in Afghanistan, and accuses it of funneling weapons to the Taliban...
There have been several attacks in and around Tal Afar since then; last March, two truck bombs killed more than 100 people in a Shi'ite neighborhood in the town. The bombings in Qahataniya were a deadly reminder that the terrorists have not gone very far away...
...heat. But to Iraqis, callous disregard is pretty much exactly what they have come to expect from their politicians. Some of the most prominent Iraqi politicians spend little time in the country, much less in parliament. Egregious absenteeism cuts across sectarian and ethnic lines: perennial no-shows include Shi'ite elder Ibrahim al-Jaafari, Sunni leader Saleh Mutlak and secular stalwarts Iyad Allawi and Adnan Pachachi. (Al-Jaafari and Allawi, both former Prime Ministers, are trying to unseat the incumbent, Nouri al-Maliki.) "There's no point in going to parliament," Allawi told TIME recently. "Nothing important is done there...
...While al-Qaeda and its affiliates pose the greatest threat to Iraqi civilians, the U.S. military official says "the far more dangerous long-term threat comes from within the Shi'ite militias." He said the current trajectory risked creating an Iraq in which the "the government is not in control of the state." Iran sheltered most of the leadership of the current Iraqi government, and Shi'ite politicians maintain that relationship. So, some Iranian influence in Iraq is inevitable. But the presence of a Hizballah-style armed group, more powerful in some areas than the national government and receiving weapons...
...disapproval of Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated government remains a serious obstacle to any sustained American effort to defang the Mahdi Army. Just as it has done after similar raids in the past, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense said Wednesday that it had no knowledge of the American attack in Sadr City. So, while the military equation may have changed for the Americans, Iraq's political realities have...