Word: shying
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Saddam can seek shelter in a palace bunker some 40 miles out of Baghdad, but allied forces are unlikely to find him there. During wartime, the Iraqi leader makes a habit of hiding in civilian areas. A Shi'ite opposition leader recalls that his cousin's family was rousted by soldiers at dawn several years ago. The group was sent to Baghdad's Al Rasheed Hotel for the next 24 hours before being permitted to return home. Only then did government officials tell the family that Saddam had spent the previous evening in its quarters. In thanks for the coerced...
...survive in power. If Iraq's Sunni Muslim ruling elite were to be ousted wholesale, no alternative government could easily take charge of the country's highly politicized military and secret police. Fear of these institutions is the strongest glue binding Iraq's fractious populace, including its long-oppressed Shi'ite Muslim majority and its rebellious northern Kurds. "When the Iraqis stop fighting us," says a senior Bush adviser, "they may turn to fighting each other." The advisers believe postwar stability in Iraq and the region is better served if the country's next ruler is "someone in the clan...
...been quietly striving to win friends inside Iraq. Frequently accused of violating the trade embargo against Baghdad in the run-up to the war, Iran last week announced openly that it would be sending food and medicine to Iraqi noncombatants, as is permitted under U.N. guidelines. Both countries have Shi'ite Muslim majorities, though the Baathist government of Saddam Hussein is dominated by Sunni Muslims. Tehran's ultimate goal, some analysts say, is to foment a takeover by Baghdad's Shi'ites. If the day ever comes that friendly Shi'ites do control Iraq, Iran might offer the new government...
...temporal rulership. But no caliphate has existed since 1924, and Sunni jurists today believe the power rests with any legitimate Muslim political authority. Lufti Dogan, a former Turkish Religious Affairs Minister, says all Muslims can be called to jihad, but there is greater receptivity to the call in Shi'ism, the minority branch of Islam that is dominant in Iran...
...that would follow. But hindsight suggests that he would probably have provoked Iran into battle even if he had known all the consequences at the outset. From his point of view, the alternative was worse: the militant Islamic fundamentalism, fanned by the Ayatullah Khomeini, would arouse Iraq's Shi'ite Muslims, some 55% of the population, leading not only to Saddam's overthrow but also to the domination of his Arab state by the descendants of the ancient Persian enemy. Would this really have happened? Saddam did not wait for an answer...