Word: sunni
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...northern provinces - including the right to retain their own armed forces and prohibit the national army from entering their domain - but also control of the divided oil-rich city of Kirkuk and of Iraq's oil ministry. That's a prohibitive price for the Arab majority, both Shiite and Sunni. The Kurds, however, mindful that their 27 percent of the Assembly counts for far more in this one moment when a two-thirds majority is required than it will ever count for again, are digging in their heels. And so, the deadlock persists, and threatens to create a long-term...
Boyle chronicled other resistance fighters who did not quite fit the mold projected by the media. One such character, whom she called “The Syrian,” was a Shiite and not a Sunni, the sect that comprises Saddam’s Baathist party...
...replace Allawi as prime minister, with the presidency going to aging Kurdish guerrilla leader Jalal Talabani. One of the two vice presidencies will go to Adel Abdul-Mahdi, the current finance minister who is also on the Shiite list, while the other will go to an as-yet unnamed Sunni - possibly current interim president Ghazi al-Yawer, although he is also believed to be a top contender for the role of speaker of the Assembly, which will also be reserved for a Sunni in the hope that the community that largely stayed away from the polls must nonetheless be accommodated...
...Shiites are reluctant to concede many of these points, which are anathema to a wide range of Arab Iraqis, both Sunni and Shiite, and also to the small Turkoman population of the north. They have tried to persuade the Kurds to let questions such as the status of Kirkuk be resolved in a democratic parliament rather than in back-room talks, but until now the Kurds have driven a hard bargain...
...Kurdish minority. That threatens national stability; by parlaying their kingmaker role into a series of autonomy guarantees to be written down even before the new parliament has convened, the risk of breakdown in the system grows. Conceding to Kurdish demands on Kirkuk, for example, will further alienate the Sunni population of northern Iraq. Also, if the peshmerga are maintained on the terms demanded by the Kurdish leaders, it will inevitably be more difficult to persuade other factions to disarm their own militias. The Sunnis may not currently have significant representation in the political process, but a significant segment...