Word: shying
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Should the U.S. help the Kurds and Shi'ites in rebellion against Saddam...
...gulf war ended a year ago. If America wanted Saddam Hussein toppled by Kurds and Shi'ites, this should have been done by now. There is already an uprising in northern Iraq, and the people of Kurdish origin, of Turkish origin, of Iraqi origin, are miserable. There is no government control. There are tribes, mostly Kurdish, controlling the region. How can these poor people topple Saddam? Furthermore, I don't think anyone wants the Shi'ites to topple Saddam. That would mean an Iranian-style regime. I don't think Iraq's neighbors would be very happy about that...
...effect could be even worse if Saddam were toppled by an American- supported Kurdish-Shi'ite rebellion. Far from clasping hands in a new regime, the guerrillas would be more likely to wage a bloody civil war for supremacy -- and not only against each other. They might join in slaughtering the Sunni Muslims in central Iraq from whom Saddam has drawn the elite of his regime. "It would make Kuwaiti brutality against the Palestinians ((who supported Iraqi occupation or were suspected of doing so)) seem mild," says a senior British diplomat...
Military checkpoints dot Route 6 from Baghdad to the southern city of Basra, evidence that tension persists between the Iraqi army and the rebellious Shi'ite population. At one checkpoint, passersby can see men being searched by soldiers. On a tour of Basra conducted by the local military governor, a general who reportedly commanded the troops that crushed the Shi'ite uprising after the war, foreigners are escorted by a truckload of armed soldiers with a roof-mounted machine gun and grenade launchers -- though the general insists all is peaceful in the city...
...Basra nightclub, young Shi'ites dance or sit in dark corners until the lights suddenly come up. A military officer trailed by about eight armed soldiers strides onto the floor. As the soldiers hold their rifles at the ready, the officer rounds up several of the Shi'ite men in the club, checks their documents and arrests them. A Foreign Ministry minder tells foreign journalists that the men defected from the army. But as always when something happens that the government does not want people to see, the minder will not allow a photographer to take pictures...