Word: sunnis
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...about breaking Arab military strength and projecting American strategic power than fighting terrorism, much less creating Iraqi democracy. While Iraq is no longer a one-man show, it will be a very long time before anyone considers the country, now dominated by Shi'ite Muslim gangs, Kurdish warlords and Sunni terrorists, emblematic of an emerging democracy. If the Iraq war was about Bush's freedom agenda, Arabs wonder, why has the White House stood by so quietly as pro-American authoritarian Arab regimes have jailed democracy activists, as happened to former presidential candidate Ayman Nour in Egypt? The White House...
...Today's bombing took place on the eve of Muharram, the Islamic month of mourning, and it could augur a new series of such attacks. Muharram has historically been associated with increased violence between the country's Sunni Muslims and its Shi'ite minority. While Muharram is important to both sects, it is particularly revered by Shias who stage elaborate processions mourning the death of the prophet Mohammad's grandson in battle - the very event that eventually led to the central schism of Islam. In 2005 a bomb in a Shi'ite shrine in southwestern Pakistan killed 50. Already sectarian...
...some ways AQI was a victim of its own success. It is practically the only organization in Iraq that all the other players in the country saw as an unacceptable threat. Both the U.S. military and the Shi'ite-dominated government had fought the Sunni jihadist group for years. By the beginning of 2007, Sunni tribal leaders and nationalist insurgents had also begun battling with their former allies in AQI in order to retake control of Sunni communities...
...fighters have also been chased out of their former strongholds in Anbar Province and west Baghdad by so-called Awakening Councils and Concerned Local Citizens - groups of Sunni leaders and fighters that now cooperate with the U.S. military. According to Petraeus, even neighboring Sunni Arab regimes have stepped up efforts to prevent militants from entering Iraq...
...trickiness of the political climate was apparent earlier in the week, when Iraq's President, who is a Kurd, its Sunni Arab vice president and the leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) met in northern Iraq and denounced the Turkish raids. "We condemn operations and they should be ended as soon as possible," said Massoud Barzani, the KRG head. But the condemnation was not as full-throated as it could have been. President Jalal Talibani stressed that Iraqis valued Turkey's friendship, and said that he hoped problems could be addressed through diplomacy...