Word: sunni
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That kind of talk is unnerving the region's Sunni Arab states, which have watched helplessly as Iran's Shi'ite rulers have accelerated their nuclear program and carved out areas of influence in Lebanon and Iraq. Not surprisingly, the Arabs are eager to be in the Lebanon game: between them, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have pledged an $800 million aid package to the Lebanese government for rebuilding projects while handing an additional $1.5 billion in soft loans to the Bank of Lebanon to shore up the nation's currency. Saudi officials believe that the kingdom's support will...
...addition to strengthening Hizballah, the race to rebuild Lebanon has exacerbated conflicts that are tearing the region apart--between the U.S. and the Arab street, between fundamentalists and the West, between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. Hizballah's principal sponsor, Iran, has moved quickly to take advantage of the respect the organization is now receiving. According to Lebanese officials, the Tehran regime sent some $150 million in cash for Hizballah's initial postwar handouts, and is expected to give hundreds of millions more to finance reconstruction projects. The consolidation of Hizballah's support in southern Lebanon may make it more...
...That's where the politics come in. "We are hoping to see what the prime minister announces," Babikir said, referring to long-discussed plans for national reconciliation, which aims to disband Shi'ite militias and bring some Sunni insurgents into the political fold with a promise of amnesty. "This will support us, and enable us to deal with the situation a lot better than we have done in the past...
...goal to reduce its military footprint and allow Iraqi forces to take over. After the failure of the first phase of Operation Forward Together, few civilians in Baghdad have much faith in the competence of the Iraqi forces. Even in volatile neighborhoods like Abu Ghraib, long a battleground between Sunni insurgents and U.S. forces, residents say they want to see more U.S. soldiers and fewer Iraqi troops. "Compared to the Shi'ite militias, the Americans are a more merciful presence," says Abu Abdallah, a field commander in Abu Ghraib for the jihadi group known as the Army of Islam...
...relationship with the truth is the Islamic and especially Shi'ite principle of taqiyya, the practice of hiding one's religious faith under life threatening circumstances. Taqiyya evolved during the early centuries of Islam, when Shi'ite Muslims faced persecution for their minority status at the hands of majority Sunnis. The concept is not, as sometimes described, carte blanche for telling lies or promoting one's interests, but rather a moral pass to tell one very specific lie (?I am not a Shi'ite') expressly to avoid being killed. From this ancient practice that is today irrelevant (in Iran...