Word: sunni
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Mehdi, who, his oldest son says, "loved the Americans," was the sole breadwinner for his large family of 13, which includes the two wives of his oldest sons and three grandchildren. The Shi'ite family lived in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of al-Dora in southern Baghdad up until the peak of sectarian violence in late 2006. That was when Mehdi's youngest son Ali, then 4, was kidnapped by insurgents and held for ransom for more than a week. After paying to get him back, the family left all their furniture and belongings and fled to Karrada, a safer...
...present an argument for dissolving its national panel or remedy the situation, but said the government had failed to comply. (The speculation is that "political interference" is shorthand for what is believed to be the predominantly Shi'ite government's appointment of co-religionists to replace the mostly Sunni membership of the Iraqi Olympic committee...
...replaced it with new appointees. The government said the old committee has failed to hold proper organizational elections, but many in Baghdad suspect a sectarian motive. They point out that the sports minister is a a Shi'ite, whereas the country's sports administration had traditionally been in Sunni hands...
...acknowledged along the way that, yes, Iraq was a safer, calmer place than it had been a year ago but refused to give much credit for that change to President George W. Bush's surge of some 30,000 troops. Instead, he noted in nearly every interview how the Sunni backlash against al-Qaeda in Iraq had begun before additional U.S. forces arrived. Pressed repeatedly, Obama insisted that his opposition to the surge had been correct--a claim that Republican Senator John McCain dismissed as "wrong then ... wrong...
With respect to Iraq, I think the conversations we had at the end of the day with the governors in Anbar or elected officials in Anbar or the tribal leaders in Anbar really gave you a sense of how close to the surface the animosity between Sunnis and Shi'as remains. The way that the [Sunni] tribal leaders and the provincial officials describe the Shi'as in Baghdad was indicative of a deep-seated lack of trust. And the fact that the violence has lessened and that [al-Qaeda in Iraq] really has been routed does not answer the larger...