Word: shying
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There is little mystery about why Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan--all Arab states with predominantly Sunni Muslim populations--would distance themselves from Hizballah. The Lebanese organization is a Shi'ite fighting force, founded and bankrolled by Shi'ite--and non-Arab--Iran. As Tehran flexes its muscles in the region, pursuing technology that could enable it to build nuclear weapons and watching as Shi'ite forces gradually dominate Iraq, Arab powers have become worried. That gives the U.S. an opening. Administration officials say one purpose of Rice's trip is to create an "umbrella of Arab allies" opposed...
...invasion of 2003 has emboldened all those who believe that further spasms of violence will force Washington and its allies to give up their push for fundamental change. And there are worse possible outcomes. Iraq could become the launching pad for a full-on war between Sunni and Shi'ite, with Iran entering the fray on the Shi'ite side and the Arab states defending Iraq's Sunnis. In the bitter Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, more than a million people were killed or wounded--and any repeat of that carnage would take place in the context...
...statistic is shocking: Iraqi civilians died in insurgent and sectarian attacks at a rate of nearly 100 a day in May and June, according to a U.N. report last week. July has been worse, with a series of Sunni-vs.-Shi'ite assaults that have each left dozens dead. One of the bloodiest: 53 people died in Kufa last week when a man in a van enticed Shi'ite day laborers with the promise of work, then blew up his vehicle as they approached...
...insists violence will abate as more Iraqi soldiers and police deploy, but the U.N. report points out that "new recruits are primary targets of the insurgency." In a rare statement last week, Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, called on Iraqis "to unite and forsake hatred and violence. Replace it with love and peaceful dialogue...
...love Damascus, but I certainly do not love being here under these circumstances. I came here from Beirut a week ago, in the aging Volvo of a Syrian named Ali, a kind middle-aged Shi'ite who has driven my friends and me back and forth between the two cities many times. His knowledge of Lebanon's roads is matched only by his devotion to Hizballah. I would have trusted no other driver to bring me safely past the Israeli jets bombing our road. But fleeing Lebanon in a car decorated with the photograph of Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah...