Word: shying
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...power and influence. They will increasingly supply local security, but in the form of protection rackets that extort as they protect. They will clash with each other over territory and control of revenue sources. Since the Sunnis remain highly disorganized, some of these local fights may initially be intra-Shi'ite. But in the absence of effective political incorporation and protection from national police and army units--which are heavily infiltrated by Shi'ite militias--Sunnis will gradually form a patchwork of militias. Neighborhood-by-neighborhood conflict and violence will increase. Think Lebanon...
...look at the ethnic conflicts and street demonstrations during Iraq's modern history, it is remarkable how few have involved Shi'ites fighting Sunnis. During the colonial era, Iraqis were united by their opposition to the British occupation. Sunni and Shi'ite tribes cooperated in rebelling against British rule, and were only put down with a bombing campaign in 1920 that killed 9,000. In 1941 mobs targeted Iraq's small Jewish population; Jews had been a valued part of the Iraqi national fabric but were accused, unfairly, of being pro-colonial. After World War II, much of the violence...
Iraqi Muslims have not all along been severely divided by religious sect. There have been many instances of strong cooperation between Sunnis and Shi'ites. Other social divides have led to mob violence in the past, but Iraqis have overcome them to re-establish national unity. It remains to be seen whether they can accomplish this feat again...
Civil wars, as a general rule, don't announce themselves when they arrive. But how else to label what Iraqis witnessed in their streets last week? What other term could describe the sight of armed and angry Shi'ite mobs rampaging through Baghdad and other cities, dragging Sunnis into the streets and executing them, looting their homes and burning down their mosques? The proximate cause of the violence was the bombing of al-Askari, the sacred Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, but that attack could only partially account for the hatreds unleashed. A government-imposed curfew briefly interrupted the slaughter...
...last boiled over--and that the fragile, feckless institutions of authority in Iraq have no means of holding the anger back. "This was the worst-case scenario we all hoped would never happen," said a Western adviser to the Iraqi government. "We've always known that when the Shi'ites ran out of patience, Iraq would run out of political options...