Word: sunni
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...Iraqi politicians the more dramatic news might be where the country's unexpected reserves lie, rather than their size. The report says about 100 billion barrels of oil and a large amount of gas lie in the Sunni-dominated Al-Anbar province. Until now, Sunni politicians have feared economic devastation if Iraq divided into a federation or imploded into disparate ethnic states, since the territory dominated by their ethnic group was thought to be the only one without large reserves of oil. (Both the Shi'ite south and Kurdish north have productive fields.) "The Western desert has lain dormant," says...
...fact that Sunni areas hold massive reserves could roil the precarious negotiations over Iraq's proposed new oil law, which would effectively end Iraq's nationalized oil industry and hand over substantial power to the regions. The Kurdish north and the Shi'a south are reluctant to allow the central government in Baghdad too much say over their regional oil production, according to sources who have attended the negotiations over the new oil law. Yet a strong role for the central government has helped calm Sunni fears of being left out of oil revenues. The law is crucial for Iraq...
...Sunni rejectionists - hard-core Baathists, local Islamists and foreign jihadists - and their allies have encouraged the political isolation of their community from the political process, and they reap its benefits. Operating on the assumption proven in Sunni minds by events of recent years that they will be oppressed, or worse, in a Shi'ite-dominated Iraq, many Sunnis are willing to tacitly or actively support violence by Sunni militants and terrorists. So, the militants have the popular support that is the lifeblood of any insurgency because it allows fighters to camouflage themselves in the civilian population. Political sentiment...
...While the Mahdi Army's tactical response to the surge has been - with some notable exceptions - to avoid being drawn into head-on fights they can't win against superior U.S. firepower, the Sunni insurgents have responded by redeploying many of their fighters outside of Baghdad in search of softer targets. Spreading their forces, for example to the eastern province of Diyala, makes it necesssary for the U.S. to spread its own forces. The U.S. has reinforced Diyala's capital, Baquba, with a Stryker brigade of some 2,000 to 3,000 men. But with the Army's manpower already...
...Both the Mahdi Army and the Sunni insurgents are working from the classic guerrilla warfare playbook: avoid confrontations with concentrations of better-armed enemy forces; lie low or mount attacks elsewhere to stretch his forces. It's been this way, in one form or another, since the insurgency began in the summer of 2003. And it's a reminder that no matter how thoughtful and well-executed the military strategy is, its effectiveness will be determined by the political reality...