Word: shiing
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...options. His government is not in immediate danger of collapsing even with the vacancies. So long as Maliki retains the backing of the Kurdish alliance and one of the main Shi'ite blocs, his government has enough supporters to fend off a vote of no-confidence in parliament. And while efforts are under way at the moment to bring Tawafiq back into the fold, Maliki has other alternatives...
...reconciliation efforts fail, Maliki would have little choice but to find other Sunni partners, who would be essential in establishing any sense of government legitimacy in an already troubled Maliki administration, which is losing support even among some stalwart Shi'ite circles. Sittar and his followers, should they be interested, represent a distant, difficult possible alternative. If Sittar becomes part of the Maliki coalition, it would be seen as a positive step by the Americans because of his recent cooperation with the U.S. military in Anbar. That closeness, however, may be politically problematical for Maliki, who has been attempting...
...charismatic and enigmatic former general who heads the country's largest Christian political party, the Free Patriotic Movement. Aoun's popularity confounds any attempt to read Lebanon as a battlefield in a "clash of civilizations," because he and his party are openly allied with Hizballah, the Iran-backed Shi'ite Muslim political party and anti-Israeli militia that leads the opposition...
...government reflects not so much an attack on democracy as it does the failure of the country's sectarian system to resolve internal disputes. The system, which reserves the presidency for the Maronite Christians, the Prime Minister's job for a Sunni, the speaker of parliament for a Shi'ite and generally distributes power on the basis of ethnicity and sect, was originally created to achieve stability through a careful balance of power. Instead, it has produced political deadlock and a system dominated by leaders whose domestic power is based on alliances with foreign powers...
...along Madain's arterial routes - most of them manned by the Iraqi security forces. The checkpoints are an improvement over the open roads that previously prevailed, but they are only as effective as the soldiers manning them. In Madain, as elsewhere in Iraq, the security forces are dominated by Shi'ites. Grigsby is aware of the danger of sectarian bias in their operations...