Word: sunni
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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February 22, 2006 was when it all went to hell. At least, that's how many Iraqis- Sunnis and Shi'ites alike - remember it. That was the day a powerful bomb set by Sunni extremists ripped through the golden dome of the ancient al-Askari Shrine, one of the holiest sites of Shi'ism, located in the predominantly Sunni city of Samarra, 65 miles north of Baghdad. The blast triggered a round of sectarian bombings, massacres and kidnappings so horrifying that for the next year and a half, many Iraqis would wonder if life would ever return to normal...
...national police couldn't have done the job alone. As in other Sunni areas of Iraq, the establishment last March of a local anti-Qaeda "Awakening" group was a major factor in Samarra's turnaround. According to the U.S. military, there are currently more than 2,000 Awakening members operating in Samarra - far more than there are policemen. "We work together in checkpoints and as fighters," says Mohammed. "There is no operation that isn't a joint operation." Their cooperation is key in an atmosphere where many Sunni residents still openly accuse the police force of being dominated by outsider...
Abbas seems friendly enough and laughs easily. As his car breezes through Iraqi army checkpoints at the entrance to Baghdad's notorious and sprawling Sadr City slum, he talks about killing Sunnis. "We caught Takfiris [members of a fundamentalist Sunni Islamist sect] who were [working] with the Americans. We didn't want to kill them, but the government was too weak to do anything at the time. So we killed them all and put them in a big grave...
Along one block, about 35 displaced Iraqi Shi'ite families from other neighborhoods occupy makeshift homes built with monetary help from the Sadr office. Most of them fled predominantly Sunni neighborhoods in and around Baghdad like al-Dora and Abu Ghraib when a rash of sectarian killings broke out in 2006. "This house was built by the Sadr office, not by the government," says Mohanid proudly...
Mehdi, who, his oldest son says, "loved the Americans," was the sole breadwinner for his large family of 13, which includes the two wives of his oldest sons and three grandchildren. The Shi'ite family lived in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of al-Dora in southern Baghdad up until the peak of sectarian violence in late 2006. That was when Mehdi's youngest son Ali, then 4, was kidnapped by insurgents and held for ransom for more than a week. After paying to get him back, the family left all their furniture and belongings and fled to Karrada, a safer...