Word: sunni
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...Preaching Tolerance re your report about the age-old divide between Sunnis and Shi'ites [March 12]: It never ceases to amaze me that people kill one another over trivial religious differences. Religious wars will be with us for a very long time. Isn't the Shi'ite-Sunni battle the same religious trivia as the Northern Ireland Protestant-Catholic mess that has been going on for so many years? How could these issues be so important that one can kill one's neighbor over them? Jeff White, Kilchberg, Switzerland...
...Baghdad has yielded some tentatively encouraging results: sectarian violence in the capital has decreased in the past month, and some displaced residents have started to return home. But in places like Diyala, the surge is having the opposite effect. The increased U.S. presence in Baghdad has pushed many Sunni and Shi'ite fighters out of the city into areas where they have found roles in ongoing battles, launched new assaults on U.S. and Iraqi troops and infected the civilian population with sectarian hate. Colonel David Sutherland, commander of U.S. forces in Diyala province, says small-arms attacks against...
...wasn't always this way. When U.S. Captain Mike Few was stationed outside Baqubah in November, tensions between Shi'ites, who make up 30% of the population of Diyala, and Sunnis were being held in check by tribal leaders. "It was manageable in the beginning," says Few. "The sheiks were working it out." But as the U.S. began shifting military resources to Baghdad, sectarian tensions erupted. Late last year the largely Shi'ite government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki choked off supplies of food and fuel to the predominantly Sunni province. Tribal violence, which has long been...
...hard to find any Iraqis--Sunni or Shi'ite--who openly embrace the presence of U.S. troops four years after the invasion. But the situation in Diyala shows why the vast majority--as many as 70%, according to a poll released on March 20--don't want them to leave. With the assault on Qubah, U.S. forces have killed roughly 70 suspected insurgents since re-entering the river valley on Feb. 27. They estimate that perhaps 100 more remain in the village of Zaganiyah, where some stragglers from Qubah may have fled and which U.S. commanders say they must eventually...
...intelligence officers suspect that the leader of Sunni insurgent forces in Buhriz lives less than three miles from the home of the leading Shi'ite in the valley, Sheik Adnan Qudban Hamid. Few, a graduate of West Point's class of 2000, spent much of his previous time in the valley working to bolster Hamid. After Few's men left the valley for Baghdad three months ago, the increase in violence restricted Hamid to his compound, keeping him from traveling the roads at all. When Few returned to visit Hamid, the sheik embraced him. "I love you!" Hamid said...