Word: sunni
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...Until now, major U.S. military offensives against Sunni militants have tended to be big set-pieces - Fallujah, Tal-Afar, Al-Qaim. Each of these operations had a long buildup, giving groups like al-Qaeda plenty of time to move their key commanders and fighters out of harm's way, leaving behind a small corps of jihadis to engage the Americans. And when the operation began, the military concentrated its energies on a single location, allowing the militants to pop up in other, relatively unprotected places...
...modern counterinsurgency tactics, Petraeus knows such operations stand or fall on the quality of the intelligence: you have to know exactly where the enemy is hiding. This is where Petreaus' predecessors have often been found wanting. Poor intel was the main reason the last major military offensive against Sunni militants ended in a huge embarrassment: Operation Swarmer in March 2006 was billed as the biggest air offensive since the end of the war, but netted only a handful of low-value insurgents...
...said that he was looking for more Sunni leaders to reach out to U.S. forces in the coming months, and for a continued weakening of the Shi'a militias...
First, Kagan claims there has been a notable shift in attitudes among Sunni factions toward the U.S. and against al-Qaeda. Kagan ticked off a number of neighborhoods where local Sunni leaders have joined forces with U.S. troops to attack al- Qaeda cells. Kagan called that development, which he said he did not foresee, "a huge thing...
...military's current security push in Baghdad, known to Iraqis as Operation Fard al-Qanoon, or Imposing Law, has elicited opposite responses from Iraq's two warring sects. Shi'ite militias like the Mahdi Army have decided to lie low; their leaders went underground or on vacation to Iran. Sunni groups, especially al-Qaeda's Iraqi wing, have girded for battle. Groups associated with the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella organization controlled by al-Qaeda, began to confer with one another and with other Sunni groups. "The first thing we realized is that we would need lots of IEDs...