Word: sunniness
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...major violence indicators" have fallen between 40% and 80% "from pre-surge levels," the GAO sees some of that progress as based on the cooperation of Iraqis who remain sharply at odds with one another. The congressional watchdog office cites the so-called "Sons of Iraq" program, a largely Sunni group of militiamen now paid by U.S. taxpayers to keep the peace in their neighborhoods. More than 100,000 strong, the group has yet to reconcile its long-standing differences with the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. U.S. efforts to integrate these forces into...
...forces in 2003. Promoted to captain 11 months ago, he arrived in Haswah with a mandate to retake the city from the Mahdi Army militia of the radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "Every day, the Mahdi Army would kill between 3 and 12 people, just for being Sunni," Rahman says. "They didn't even hide it. They would leave the bodies right in the street. The second day I was here, five of them came to this office and told me that this was their town, and if I messed with them I would regret...
...Captain Rahman, himself a Shi'a, refused to be intimidated. He added 70 Sunni officers to what had been a 225-strong, exclusively Shi'ite force, and began aggressively patrolling the streets, in conjunction with the U.S. military, to rid the city of its criminal militias. Inevitably, he found himself accused of bias by the Mahdi Army and its media, which accused him of being an agent, alternately, of the U.S., Israel and al-Qaeda. Death threats soon followed, and his fiancee's family's home was robbed...
...bristles at one American-supported strategy. Much of the peace in the area also stems from the deployment of the "Sons of Iraq," armed Sunni security groups funded by the U.S. Ali grudgingly acknowledges their role. However, even the name makes him testy. "I hate this name. Are we not all Sons of Iraq? I call them volunteers. They have helped securing the peace, yes, but there is only one army and one police force and at some point, these people will have to become a part of these forces...
...major downside of General Ali's non-partisan stance is that he makes enemies from many parties. When, in April, the residents of Mahmudiya began uncovering mass graves of dozens of mostly Sunni bodies, a television station with ties to the Sunni Islamic Party accused General Ali of having a hand in the killings. General Ali's troops had raided the Islamic Party's Mahmudiya headquarters earlier in the year, uncovering a cache of weapons and explosives. A committee appointed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki exonerated the general. An internal U.S. Army report similarly concluded that there...