Word: sunni
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...election commission barred some 500 candidates from Iraq's parliamentary elections in March, acting on a list compiled by another panel that cited alleged ties to the outlawed Baath Party once led by Saddam Hussein. The move threatened to spark sectarian strife by angering members of the country's Sunni minority, who claimed they would be disproportionately affected and saw the ruling as an attempt to curtail their participation...
...some point he embraced Islam and became the local leader of a Muslim sect known as the Ummah. In court documents, federal authorities describe the Ummah as a "nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group consisting mainly of African Americans" who converted from Christianity while serving prison sentences. The Ummah's national leader is Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, a militant civil rights-era figure once known as H. Rap Brown. In 2001, al-Amin was convicted of fatally shooting two Georgia police officers; he remains in a federal prison...
...blasts occurred amid rancorous and sectarian political debate in Iraq. The predominantly Shi'ite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had somehow managed to ban many important Sunni politicians from running in parliamentary elections scheduled for March 7. This comes just as the large Sunni minority - the base for much of the radical resistance to the government - had decided it wanted to participate in the vote, having been shut out of political power by boycotting the last major election. Now, nearly two score people were dead and U.S. Apache helicopters were patrolling the air in the aftermath of another...
...Most Sunnis boycotted the last election, only to find themselves shut out of the country's subsequent political process while politicians with ties to Shi'ite militant groups took important posts. Civil war ensued after Shi'ite hard-liners sought payback for the years of oppression under Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime, while Sunni hard-liners took up arms against the new government. Luring Sunni parties back into politics was one of the cornerstones of the successful realignment of American policy toward Iraq, one that was reinforced by the surge of American forces in Baghdad. It led to a steady...
...confrontation escalates and endangers the election itself. The U.S. - which has promised to withdraw all its combat troops from Iraq by Aug. 31 and all remaining soldiers by 2011 - has tied the timing and pace of withdrawal to the successful completion of this election. Though it is unlikely that Sunni parties will again boycott the election or return to violent tactics, the parliament's sleight of hand could be a warning that however much the White House and the American public would like to close the tragic book on Operation Iraqi Freedom, a stable and democratic Iraq is far from...