Word: sunni
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...Under the enlightened leadership of Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, the Shi'ite majority has played the democracy game with gusto. It has acknowledged the importance of Kurdish and Sunni minority rights and seems unlikely to demand the constitutional imposition of strict Islamic law. Most important, it has resisted the temptation to retaliate against the outrageous violence of Sunni extremists, especially against Shi'ite mosques. Several Administration officials told me they hope that Hamas and Hizballah will respond similarly to the peaceful desires of their people, that they will emphasize stability, economic development and social services and avoid military posturing...
...Hizballah's efforts to apply the brakes to a Syrian withdrawal signal a failure of initial opposition efforts to forge an anti-Syria consensus with Nasrallah's movement. It may be touted as non-sectarian, but in reality it represents an amalgam of traditional political forces from the Christian, Sunni Muslim and Druze communities. Hizballah speaks for the majority of Shiites. And its response to the opposition campaign betrays a measure of suspicion that its rivals may be engaging in the longstanding tradition of Lebanese factions drawing in foreign allies to reinforce their own positions...
...gets the top job, al-Jaafari, a physician by training, will have to display a surgeon's dexterity to hold together fractious Shi'ites, cool off restive Kurds and reach out to disaffected Sunni Arabs--all while figuring out how to accommodate a U.S. military presence that is widely resented but still indispensable to the country's security. It helps that al-Jaafari is acceptable to most of Iraq's ethnic, religious and political groups; opinion polls last year identified him as one of Iraq's most respected politicians. "He is not a divisive figure, and in Iraq today, that...
Since returning to Iraq after the U.S. invasion, al-Jaafari has worked to shore up his secularist credentials. "He may head a Shi'ite party, but he has never sounded like a Shi'ite politician," says Ammar Zain Alabideen, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party, the leading Sunni political group. Dawa retains ties to the Iranian government, but al-Jaafari says that won't jaundice the way he views Washington. "The U.S. liberated Iraq from Saddam, and for that we will forever be grateful," he told TIME...
...effect of Operation Iraqi Freedom has not been to make U.S. enemies tremble in the face of American power. Instead, it has made them more aware of the limits of that power. A two-year occupation by 150,000 U.S. troops has failed to subdue an insurgency by a Sunni Muslim force that U.S. officials insist numbers no more than 12,000. Today, U.S. officials concede that the insurgency can't be defeated militarily, and it has long been evident to the Europeans and others that Washington's military resources are badly overstretched by the mission in Iraq - and that...