Word: shying
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...their part, Saudi Arabia's leaders have grown increasingly worried about the rising power of Iran. The Persian and Shi'ite dominated Islamic Republic is both a religious and racial challenge to Arab and Sunni Saudi Arabia's dominance of the region, and Iran has deftly exploited the divisions in the Arab world by allying itself with radical anti-Israeli movements, in concert with Syria. With Iran's ongoing nuclear-development program - which many Arab countries suspect is a cover for producing weapons - raising those concerns to a fever pitch, Saudi Arabia has decided it can no longer afford open...
...past month, the government, which is Sunni-dominated, has stepped up its military offensive against Shi'ite rebels, known as Houthis, whom officials blame for the killings. It's a continuation of a war that began in 2004, when the government killed a Houthi leader, raising fears among Yemeni followers of the Zaydi sect of Shi'ite Islam that they were being targeted for eradication by the government and Sunni extremists. So far, thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have been displaced by the fighting, mostly in the northern province of Saada. The government has used aerial bombardment...
When Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki parted ways with his Shi'a allies in the ruling Iraqi National Alliance, everyone expected the wily politician, who has led Iraq since April 2006, to come up with a political bloc of his own. On Thursday, Maliki took the stage in the ballroom of Baghdad's upper-crusty Al-Rasheed hotel, before a crowd of more than 500 guests - including American, European and Asian diplomants - and, one by one, 55 leaders of his new "State of Law" coalition came up to join him. It appeared to be a veritable national unity slate, composed...
...formidable organization. Its predominant partners are the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq - the largest Shi'ite political party now led by Ammar al-Hakim, the son of the recently departed and revered cleric Abdulaziz al-Hakim - and the militant Moqtada al-Sadr's party, which has its pulse on the much of the country's poor and frustrated Shi'a underclass. (Read how the shoe-thrower put Maliki in a sensitive spot...
...Islamic Republic has substituted raw political calculation for the legacy of its founder, it has not yet trickled down to the pious Shi'ites from the provinces who gather at his tomb. There, devotion and loyalty to the Imam still rings true. On a recent summer day, a group of women in head-to-toe chadors sat outside the main doors, chatting away and having a picnic. It was one of the few bright moments in a season of darkness...