Word: sunni
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...maybe not. Saudi Arabia's problems are increasingly like the many-headed hydra of myth: slice off a head, others grow in its place. Worse, the Saudi government may be facing two hydras. The four men executed in the first bombing were members of the Sunni Muslim majority of the country. The 40 in custody for the Dhahran attack belong to the kingdom's Shi'ite minority. And the Shi'ite suspects bring with them the specter of a greater menace--Iran, the center of Shi'ism that lies about 160 miles across the gulf. Indeed, the Saudis believe Tehran...
Some Saudi dissidents view the recent bombings as signals that violent jihadis--those who fight holy wars--are seizing the ascendancy from Islamic moderates who advocate political reform. "After the Dhahran bombing, there was jubilation," says Saad Fagih, a Sunni exile leader in London. "Each of these acts is a kind of recruitment for this violent trend. It says, 'See? We are doing something.'" And in a country where even politically moderate Saudis proudly call themselves fundamentalists, the fundamentalist dissidents among the majority Sunni could be the greatest threat to the throne...
...nine provinces. Massood has been skirmishing with the Taliban since the movement drove Afghanistan's government out of Kabul two weeks ago, and Dostum says he fears he will be next. The men lead a minority population in the north that fears persecution from the Taliban, who are generally Sunni Muslims and members of the nation's ethnic Pashtun majority. The new alliance raises the spectre of a large-scale civil war in a nation that has weathered Soviet occupation, protracted civil war and political infighting over the last two decades. Mark Coatney
BEIRUT: Some 50 Iraqi military officers were arrested recently under suspicion of a conspiracy against Saddam Hussein in the latest attempt to overthrow the Iraqi leader since the end of the Gulf War. Iraqi dissidents said all the suspects are Sunni Muslims -- a group commonly considered to be Hussein's main base of power -- and included several trusted officers from Tikrit, Hussein's hometown. Last week, in possibly another planned attack, a former head of army intelligence claimed that several Republican Guard officers were charged with planning to assassinate Saddam and his two sons. The general, Wafiq al-Samarra...
...overthrow the ruling Khalifa family with the help of Iran. "For nearly two years Bahrain's government has been experiencing political opposition and unrest from the country's Shiite majority," reports TIME's Scott MacLeod. "The Shiites have been demanding more political and economic representation from the ruling Sunni monarchy." Bahrain's Information Minister Mohammed al Muttawa said the plotters were part of an Iranian-backed group that wants to install a Shiite Muslim government modeled on Tehran's. Despite protests from the Bahraini government, MacLeod notes that the unrest is less the result of Iranian meddling than...