Word: shying
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Angry Shi'ite mourners punch the air with their fists and chant vows of revenge as the coffin of Ahmad Mahmoud passes by, draped in the Lebanese national flag and sprinkled with rose petals. Shot dead Sunday evening during street fighting between Sunni and Shi'ite youths, the 20-year-old Mahmoud is being lionized by the Hizballah-led opposition as the first "martyr" of its protest campaign to topple the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. But some Lebanese fear that Mahmoud may be remembered as the first casualty of a new civil...
...Mahmoud's death has ignited long-simmering tensions between Shi'ite and Sunni communities, which have even begun to eclipse Lebanon's more familiar Christian-Muslim divide and instead parallels the sectarian schism throughout the Middle East that has been reopened by the conflict in Iraq...
...Like other Shi'ite politicians - including Prime Minister al-Maliki - al-Hakim believes the U.S. military and Iraqi security forces should be expending their entire resources and energies in crushing the Sunni insurgency. That will likely be his message to President Bush...
...Bush administration's main goal in Iraq at the moment is to halt the sectarian killings - blamed in large part on Shi'ite militias, including the armed wing of Hakim's own party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Known as the Badr Organization, the militia was formed in Iran during the Saddam era, and it is known to take guidance (and, some of its critics allege, perhaps even its orders) from Tehran. U.S. officials have been pressing the Iraqi government to disarm such militias. The President brought up that suggestion at his breakfast meeting with...
...Shi'ite leader has long maintained that the militias perform a valuable service, defending neighborhoods from attack by Sunni insurgents. In interviews with TIME, he has described the militias as akin to neighborhood watch committees. Bush may also find al-Hakim unwilling to listen to any complaints about the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr. Although the two Shi'ite clerics are rivals, they have a mutual interest in keeping the U.S. at arm's length. Al-Hakim knows that if he goes along with any American plan to crack down on al-Sadr's militia, his own Badr Organization...