Word: sunni
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Sahar Ashour Nema has been visited twice by Iraq's sectarian demons. Two years ago, her husband, a Shi'ite laborer, was murdered by Sunni militants, who decapitated him, then hacked his body to pieces and set ablaze his small mobile home in western Baghdad. Before taking her children with her to live in her father's home in nearby al-Haswa, Nema returned one last time to their old neighborhood--just long enough to collect her husband's charred body parts in a plastic bag so he could have a decent burial. Her Sunni neighbors were impassive. "Nobody offered...
...racked the country over the past two weeks has upended the lives of thousands of families like Nema's, forcing them to leave their homes and changing the complexion of cities like Baghdad, perhaps forever. Across the capital, mixed neighborhoods have undergone the equivalent of wholesale religious cleansing, as Sunnis and Shi'ites have sought safety in their sectarian communities. In areas where Shi'ites and Sunnis once lived in tolerance, even harmony, the two sides are drawing sectarian lines to separate themselves from each other--even as Iraqi politicians and U.S. diplomats express hope that the risk...
...speaks from experience. Mohammed's family fled its home in Baladiat, in northeastern Baghdad, in the aftermath of the Samarra blast. Once a mainly Sunni enclave adjoining the Shi'ite district of Sadr City, Baladiat gradually turned into a mixed neighborhood after the fall of Saddam Hussein. "We made lots of friends among the Shi'ites," Mohammed says. "On their festivals, we would invite them to feasts at our home." The day after the shrine bombing, he was at work when his uncle called. "He said, 'Come home at once.' He sounded frightened." But Mohammed was on duty and could...
...family hometown of Fallujah. Despite a daytime curfew, Mohammed says, many neighboring Shi'ites attended the funeral. "Some of them were very helpful. They helped us make all the arrangements," he says, his voice breaking. Even so, the family decided not to return to Baladiat. "The only Sunni families left there are those who have many sons and many weapons," Mohammed says. "And even they know the time will come when they have to leave...
Victims of the sectarian violence have little faith that the country's politicians will find a way to stop the killings--and hold no hope of getting justice from a largely corrupt and inept police force that many Sunnis believe has been infiltrated by Shi'ite militias and death squads. "Those who killed my cousins will be punished," says Mohammed, "but not by the police or the government. They will answer to God." Many others are pinning their hopes for revenge on armed vigilantes or sectarian militias like the Mahdi Army and Sunni insurgent groups. Although politicians and religious leaders...