Word: sunni
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...mandate beyond the January 30 election - and raises the specter of a long-term open-ended U.S. troop commitment. For the Shiites, the election represents a long-awaited opportunity to peacefully assume power proportionate to their demographic majority, and they'll brook no delay at the behest of the Sunni minority they plan to displace in the corridors of power. And while the Sunni insurgents have the capacity for violent disruption, the Shiite clerical leadership has previously demonstrated the sort of mass urban support that, if called onto the streets, could render the U.S.-authored transition untenable...
...Those advocating postponement insist that going ahead on January 30 will mean proceeding without Iraq's Sunni population, for whom the outcome will then be delegitimized and on whose support the insurgency will be able to count for years to come. A substantial minority of the Sunni population, up to 30 percent, is believed to sympathize with the insurgency and will therefore observe a boycott call. But other, more moderate Sunni parties have withdrawn from the election on the grounds that it can't be held under present security conditions. The registering of voters and other electoral preparations in areas...
...Bush administration had hoped that the Sunnis would recognize that by staying away from the polls, they were denying themselves any influence over the shaping of the new Iraq, and that this would force them to reconsider. But that reasoning only holds to the extent that Sunnis believe that January 30 will be the last word on Iraq's political future. Clearly they don't, as a result of the insurgency, and the talk of finding formulae to accommodate the Sunnis if they stay away. Indeed, the calls for postponement of the elections by moderate Sunni elements such as acting...
...reports of dozens of attacks, ranging from car bombings and ambushes of U.S. and government troops to the systematic assassination of government officials and election workers, many of whom have now quit in some of the hottest insurgent target areas north of Baghdad. And while Baghdad, Mosul and the Sunni areas north and immediately south of the capital have born the brunt of the violence, insurgents have shown an ability to wreak havoc far from their home bases in such Shiite strongholds as Najaf, Karbala and Basra...
...Allawi government, General Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, on Monday claimed that the number of insurgents was more like 200,000 - in other words, greater than the number of troops the U.S. has in Iraq. And U.S. military officials and analysts have long-since conceded that most of the insurgents are Sunni Iraqis rather than foreigners. Shahwani's numbers may also explain why an operation such as the recapture of Fallujah, in which the U.S. military claimed to have killed around 1,000 insurgents and detained a further 2,000, does not appear to have turned the tide...