Word: sunniness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...council members to be women. Without the law, many Iraqis acknowledge, there would be a far slimmer showing of female candidates. A similar quota was in place for the last round of nationwide elections, which took place in 2005. But in Anbar, where most of the province's majority Sunni population boycotted that vote, political participation for men and women alike is relatively new. "Democracy will be real in Anbar in 2009," says Jubbair Rashid Na'if, another high-ranking tribal leader, whose wife Bushra Hassan Ali al-Feraji is also a candidate on the Tribes of Iraq list...
...after the Kurdish bloc, say they see a window of opportunity. As Iraq moves toward its first round of nationwide elections in nearly four years, a complex political map of new parties and fluid, cross-sectarian alliances suggest that the country may be slowly moving beyond the Shi'ite-Sunni divide that characterized the post-Saddam Hussein politics of previous years...
...start, the main Shi'ite and Sunni political blocs are crumbling. In three weeks of infighting over the resignation of the speaker of parliament and the task of appointing his replacement, the Sunni Tawafiq bloc has shrunk to just over half its original size of 44 MPs. In the past three years, parliament has also seen the ruling Shi'ite bloc slowly split apart. The most significant blow came in 2007 with the angry departure of dozens of followers of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. And the bloc's remaining big powers - al-Maliki's Dawa Islamic Party...
...National Accord candidate for the Baghdad provincial council. Secular candidates say disillusionment with the legacy of those blocs is also creating a shift toward a more nonsectarian type of politics. "The Islamic party and the Islamic movements are retreating from the Iraqi streets. The Iraqi streets are becoming non-Sunni and non-Shi'ite," says another secular candidate, Nebras al-Ma'mouri. "Voters are looking for people outside of these things. I can't say all of Iraqi society is thinking this way, but I think a lot of people...
...experts argue, was to send a message to Hamas' sponsor, Iran. It's certainly true that the assault has broken the Iranian pipeline that delivered weapons and funds to the militants. But by killing hundreds of Palestinians, Israel may have undermined its hopes of forming common cause with moderate Sunni Arab states against the nuclear ambitions of Shi'ite Iran...