Word: sunniness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Mosul remains at war. Although the conflict in most parts of Iraq has largely subsided - the uneasy peace punctured only sporadically by spurts of bloodshed - it isn't over in Mosul. Al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups remain a force in this majority Sunni, ethnically and religiously mixed northern city, Iraq's third largest...
...meandering Tigris River cuts Mosul into a larger, tamer "green" eastern section and a violent and insecure "red" west, the heart of the crisis. Graffiti lauding the Islamic army of Iraq, a hard-line Sunni group loosely affiliated with al-Qaeda, are prevalent in many parts of west Mosul. Iraqi security forces have crossed out some of the writing on the wall, but it's proving harder to erase the insurgents and their support base. "I knew AQ [al-Qaeda] was a problem, but I didn't know to what extent," says Lieut. Colonel Thomas W. Cipolla, battalion commander...
Still, that's not good enough for some Iraqis, especially Sunnis worried about their co-religionists, who make up 80% of Bucca's detainee population. The Tawafuk Front, the largest Sunni parliamentary bloc with 44 of the legislature's 275 seats, says it doesn't trust the Shi'ite-led government and wants all of the detainees immediately released, even "the minority" they acknowledge might be al-Qaeda members. "Even if you released an al-Qaeda emir [leader], he won't be able to wreak havoc in the same way he did three years ago," says Omar Almashhadani, a spokesman...
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...
...recalibrating its focus. "The politics of the attacks have changed," the source said. "They don't want to attack the Americans because they know they are leaving. They are targeting the Awakening councils and the tribes because they are working with the government," he said, referring to the mainly Sunni councils that turned against the insurgency and sided with the U.S. "They are definitely planning bigger attacks. In due time, you will...