Word: sunni
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...ground, what the U.S. and its Afghan allies would have to concede in order to get a deal that would make a difference. The model for Obama's suggestion, of course, is Iraq, where the U.S. managed to pacify Anbar province by recruiting most of the local Sunni sheiks, who had previously been part of the insurgency, to wage a common fight against al-Qaeda. But Obama admitted that the Iraq strategy is hardly an easy fit. "The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex [than Iraq]," he said. "You have a less governed region, a history of fierce...
...into power are in the majority. Success in Iraq, moreover, was based on the presence of security forces numbering some 600,000 troops and police officers (Iraqi and foreign), whereas in Afghanistan, which is larger both in land mass and population, there are only 160,000 troops. The moderate Sunni insurgents in Iraq could be confident that they would be protected if they switched sides, but NATO forces in Afghanistan would not be in a position to offer the same guarantees to Taliban-aligned warlords who change their allegiance, making such defections less likely...
...joint tour by Sunni and Shi'ite tribal sheiks was supposed to be part of an effort toward national reconciliation: a walk through the Abu Ghraib marketplace in western Baghdad after the conclusion of a nearby peace meeting. But it turned into a bloodbath. At least 32 people were killed - including security officials as well as two Iraqi television journalists - and dozens were wounded after a suicide bomber detonated his explosives belt in the crowd. (See pictures of the aftershocks of the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal...
Still, the audacity of the attacks, coupled with their lethal effectiveness and high casualty rates, may signal the resumption of a reinvigorated insurgency that has had time to regroup. A source close to the insurgency told TIME that sleeper cells in and around the Sunni stronghold of Abu Ghraib - site of the infamous prison now renamed the Baghdad Central Prison - have been planning renewed attacks for months. Tuesday's strike in the marketplace was carried out by the sheik of a local extremist Takfiri mosque, a man in his 20s named Abu Taymiyeh, the source claimed. The allegation could...
Iraq?s insurgency includes several disparate groups: religious zealots like the Takfiris (followers of an extremist form of Sunni Islam) and al-Qaeda, on the one hand, and remnants of Saddam?s former secular Baathist regime on the other. The two sides were united by their common enemies: U.S. troops and the Iraqis who worked with the ?occupiers,? like al-Maliki, but little else. (See a who's who of combatants in Iraq...