Word: sunnis
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...purges aimed at transforming mixed neighborhoods like Washash into ethnic strongholds. U.S. soldiers who raided a suspected Mahdi Army safe house in Washash last month say they found pages from a neighborhood housing log; among the papers was a list of 65 houses where Shi'ite families have replaced Sunni families. On other pages were drafts of threat letters clearly intended for delivery to Sunni homes. The log included a roster of "virtuous families" in the Washash area with house numbers written next to their names so the militia relocation agents could keep track of people deemed fit to stay...
...latest eruption of sectarian violence in Baghdad, which began with a mortar and car-bomb attack by Sunni insurgents on Thursday, is sure to accelerate the cleansing. The constant churn of people moving and resettling is an indication of how far the country has moved toward an irreversible breakup, similar to the one the world witnessed in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Al-Qaeda in Iraq's bloody campaign against Shi'ites nationwide has ensured that almost all of western Iraq is clear of Shi'ites. Iraq's Kurdish territory in the north has all but seceded...
...Amid the frenzy of repopulation, mixed neighborhoods like Washash have become the main battlegrounds of sectarian warfare. The slum is a maze of tumbledown buildings and is home to 40,000 people - during Saddam's time, roughly divided between Sunnis and Shi'ites. As TIME's Tim McGirk reported on a visit to Washash in August 2005, low-level sectarian murders began more than a year ago. When U.S. soldiers moved into the neighborhood about a month ago to quell the bloodshed, Shi'ites and Sunnis appeared to be targeting one another unpredictably. But as U.S. soldiers learned more about...
...Many of the dead bodies on the streets of Washash in recent weeks have been those of the main male figures of Sunni households, whom Shi'ite death squads typically target in order to frighten a family into abandoning a home. U.S. soldiers who continue to operate in Washash don't believe the ongoing sectarian violence flows just from frictions on the streets there anymore. Instead, they put blame squarely on Mahdi Army operatives from outside the neighborhood, militants who U.S. soldiers say are out to turn Washash into a Shi'ite bastion for al-Sadr on the west side...
...Publicly, few religious leaders or prominent political figures among either Sunnis or Shi'ites openly endorse the idea of violent dislocation programs meant to fracture the country. But no one is doing much to stop them. The Association of Muslim Scholars, an eminent Sunni group, continues to circulate DVDs that feature interviews with Sunnis who tell stories of displacement by Mahdi Army loyalists and government forces from the Ministry of the Interior. For their part, al-Sadr's allies downplay the specter of an Iraq broken forever along sectarian divides. "It is natural for the Sunni families to leave their...