Word: sunni
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...Iraqis and paving the way for an eventual reduction of the U.S. troop presence. The establishment of a popularly elected government, in the U.S. view, would help erode support for the insurgency. But it's highly likely that the vote will be compromised by violence and plagued by Sunni underparticipation, and that means the legitimacy of the new government will be suspect from the start. And while some members of the insurgency--whose estimated strength could be higher than 20,000--may be coaxed to come in from the cold, there's little chance that jihadist guerrillas will abandon their...
Leaders of the Shi'ites and the Kurds, who together make up 80% of the population and are likely to be disproportionately represented in the new Assembly, have promised to include Sunnis in the government. Ensuring Sunni participation is crucial to the Assembly's most important task: writing a new Iraqi constitution, which must be drafted by Aug. 15 and put to a nationwide referendum by Oct. 15. Sunnis in and outside Iraq fret that a Shi'ite-dominated Assembly might produce fears of an Iranian-style Shi'ite theocracy taking root in Baghdad. But Iraqi Shi'ite leaders have...
Some Iraqi politicians speculate that the Shi'ites may even offer the presidency to a prominent Sunni--possibly the incumbent, Ghazi al-Yawer. (Others have suggested that it's the Kurds' turn to get the presidency, making Jalal Talabani the front runner.) Sunni political parties like the Iraqi Islamic Party have indicated that they may be open to some such accommodation if the terms are right...
...this point, many Americans seem willing to call al-Hakim's bluff. But the Pentagon believes a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would condemn Iraq to a bloodbath wrought by Sunni insurgents against a weak central government that might then be tempted to seek help from Iran. That said, the U.S. is well aware that the Iraqis will probably demand that the Americans start making plans to leave. In November the CIA's departing station chief in Baghdad sent a cable to Washington predicting that the new government would insist on a schedule for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. A State Department...
...position is that a timetable for troop withdrawal is out of the question. That, at any rate, is what top U.S. officials told an influential Sunni clerical group in early January after the imams said they would consider calling off their boycott of the vote in return for a pullout schedule. But the Pentagon is accelerating plans to embed U.S. military advisers with Iraqi security forces in hopes of improving their combat capabilities so that they can take over for U.S. troops. "The most important goal is to get the Iraqis into the fight, not to get our numbers down...