Word: shying
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...young Iraqi Shi'ite walks up to you in the Yard and asks how you feel about the Gulf War. Once reminded of what he is talking about, you look back at the events of the winter of 1991 and begin to sense a growing uneasiness about the whole damn affair...
...successes of the Kurds in Iraq's north as well as those of predominantly Shi'ite rebels staging a simultaneous uprising in the south have plainly spooked Saddam. Last weekend in an apparent bid to soothe popular discontent, Saddam relinquished one of his posts, that of Prime Minister, and named a new 24-member Cabinet. The new Prime Minister, Saadoun Hammadi, formerly deputy PM, is a Shi'ite and, within the context of the ruling Baath Party, is considered a moderate. But the changes are unlikely to convince the Iraqi masses that the regime has truly turned over...
...Kurds have always been tough fighters; Saladin, the nemesis of the Crusaders, was a Kurd. But this time, they have been helped by a convergence of propitious factors. Because Baghdad at first considered the unrest in the Shi'ite areas more threatening, it moved troops in the north southward, giving the guerrillas a more open field. Popular disgust with Saddam's disastrous Kuwaiti adventure fertilized the ground. "Uprising is an art," says Jalal Talabani, Damascus-based leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. "There must be a climate...
Though there is no indication that the Kurds are coordinating military tactics with the insurrectionists in the south, both Kurdish and Shi'ite groups belong to the Joint Action Committee formed by Iraqi opposition organizations in December. Still, the ambitions of the Kurds, who are Sunnis, and the Shi'ites, who want a fundamentalist government in Baghdad, are hopelessly in conflict. Last week Talabani said bluntly, "There will not be an Islamic regime in Iraq." Meanwhile, the Shi'ites suspect that in victory Kurdistan would bolt from the republic at the first opportunity. Outsiders are equally skeptical that the Kurds...
...armed forces, which are dominated by Sunni Arabs, are also aware that both the Shi'ites and the Kurds are revolting not just against Saddam but against Sunni subjugation as well. Preserving Sunni predominance would thus require quashing the rebels' aspirations. For the Kurds, a capital and a fortune may yet prove as illusory as those slaves...