Word: sunni
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...Qaeda may be overstaying its welcome in Iraq. A powerful Sunni insurgent group, the Islamic Army in Iraq, has posted an open letter on an affiliated website demanding that none other than Osama bin Laden intervene to bring his Iraq-based followers "in line." Al-Qaeda, which is primarily a non-Iraqi Sunni group, had long teamed up with Iraqi Sunni insurgents. But tensions between the two camps escalated in the fall, when al-Qaeda created a new jihadi supergroup called the Islamic State of Iraq to unite the disparate cells fighting the U.S. and Shi'ite militias. Al-Qaeda...
Though more tribal violence seems an odd solution for war-torn Iraq, the U.S. is hopeful that Iraqis will finally rise up against al-Qaeda outsiders. In Anbar province, a U.S.-backed council of Sunni sheiks has made it its mission to force al-Qaeda out of the area. On April 6, the council announced it had killed four al-Qaeda operatives. "Our work," read a statement from the sheik heading the council, "continues until we finish them...
...cease-fire over between the U.S. and the forces of Shi'ite warlord Moqtada al-Sadr? For the past couple of months, al-Sadr had set aside his bellicose rhetoric and lain low. So low, in fact that the speculation was that he was in Iran. Meanwhile, even as Sunni suicide bombers unleashed carnage in Shi'ite areas of Baghdad in recent weeks, Sadr's forces have kept themselves largely in check, curbing death squad activities that had caused so much carnage. But, in a message sent to an anti-American demonstration today in Najaf, Sadr urged Iraqi security forces...
General David Petraeus has repeatedly said, "A military solution to Iraq is not possible." Translation: This thing fails unless there is a political deal among the Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds. There is no such deal on the horizon, largely because of the President's aversion to talking to people he doesn't like. And while some Baghdad neighborhoods may be more peaceful--temporarily--as a result of the increased U.S. military presence, the story two years from now is likely to resemble the recent headlines from Tall 'Afar: dueling Sunni and Shi'ite massacres have destroyed order...
...small minority without a militia of their own, Iraqi Christians have been persecuted by both Shi'a and Sunni Muslim militias, and also by criminal gangs. "They think because we have liquor stores or live in nice neighborhoods we have more money," says Ghassan Mansou Chamoun, an Iraqi Christian from Mosul who arrived in Lebanon in December. The 36-year-old taxi driver left after receiving death threats from the Muslim family of one his passengers who died in an accident. "They wanted $50,000 or my head," he said...