Word: shied
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Even as Iraq's Sunni-Shi'ite divide appears to be tenuously mending, another seam in the country's patchwork multiethnic and sectarian society is on the verge of unraveling. Territorial disputes between Arabs and Kurds - in the provinces of Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala - now pose a serious risk of violence...
Kurds say al-Maliki has been quietly rotating senior Kurdish officers out of army units stationed in volatile provinces, including Nineveh, and replacing them with Arabs. That's disputed by Major General Hassan Kareem Abbas, the Shi'ite commander of the Nineveh Operations Command. Kurdish officers have been replaced, the general says, but by other Kurds, a view supported privately by senior U.S. officers in Mosul...
...issued several calls for national reconciliation, even reaching out to former low-level members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, encouraging them to return to mainstream politics. But Iraq isn't a place with short memories. Reconciliation is difficult in a land where the 1,400-year-old Shi'ite-Sunni schism is still very much alive. Gone are the days when some Iraqi men carried three national identification cards - one listing their name as Omar (a predominantly Sunni name), another as Ali (predominantly Shi'ite) and a third as Ammar (which can be either). Still, few families have trickled...
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...
...hold one of the keys that will give this place a chance at putting its past behind it. While the tribal dynamic does not extend throughout the country, especially in more urban centers or among Christian communities, much of the fighting came from tribal elements, both Sunni and Shi'ite. Tribal reconciliation is an age-old mechanism for resolving disputes. When the leader of a tribe speaks, if he says he has reconciled with another or with the government, his word is law, and all members of that tribe fall in line. That's why al-Maliki is reaching...