Word: sunni
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...summit had been described by organizers as the most ambitious gathering of the movement to date. It came within weeks of a decision by several Sunni groups - including the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Iraqi Hamas and Ansar al-Sunna - to unite in advance of an expected American military withdrawal, and meet in Damascus to unveil their new alliance. Conference organizers said that this week's event fell victim to logistical hurdles. Less than 200 of the 600 people invited showed up, a result of coalition roadblocks and security measures as well as the fear of reprisal from government forces after their...
Late Monday evening, dozens of conference attendees - a group drawn primarily from the ranks of former military officers, Ba'athist officials, and the Sunni insurgency - gathered for a catered dinner beside the hotel's outdoor pool. Several, including a high-ranking former military officer now overseeing Ba'athist resistance activities in his region, talked openly, if carefully, about strategy, although some asked that their names be withheld. ("We are not afraid," said the former Iraqi army colonel, as waiters delivered the main course of steak and carrots, "but we do not want to give the [Shi'a] militias justification...
...result of the military's "surge" strategy is that the U.S. has handed over to Sunni tribal sheiks much greater responsibility for their security - and even the weapons to back it up - in exchange for severing their links to al-Qaeda. That's a manageable risk while U.S. forces are nearby; if they depart, it becomes tinder in a dry forest. The danger would be not just sectarian slaughter but outright anarchy as well. "Our immediate concern," says a senior Arab diplomat, "is that sending a signal of complete withdrawal could encourage some elements in every faction in every political...
...worst-case scenario is an Iraq war that becomes a regional conflict. Sunni sympathizers in the region - most notably in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria - would funnel arms and cash to their kinsmen in Iraq to counter the Shi'ites, just as the government of Iran is quietly helping the Shi'ites themselves. "One of the things we've seen elsewhere, whether it is Ireland or Palestine," says Jon Alterman, Middle East director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "is that when you have people outside the country that are doing the paying, you will continue to have...
...Anthony Cordesman, a security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the U.S. military estimates that al-Qaeda in Iraq - a group thought to number several thousand - accounts for only about 15% of the attacks in Iraq. (Other Sunni groups account for 70%, with Shi'ite militias responsible for the remaining 15%.) But, Cordesman says, those attacks are the most deadly and "probably do the most damage in pushing Iraq toward civil war." At the moment, al-Qaeda in Iraq is valuable to Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, even though the links...