Word: sunnis
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...Ubaid, 28, returned to her home in Dora, a notoriously violent Baghdad neighborhood, where U.S. and Iraqi forces fight fierce daily battles against Sunni insurgents. As the fighting escalated, her family deemed it too dangerous for her to leave the house. Lonely, she began calling Ali, 32, for the occasional chat; these soon became daily conversations and then blossomed into love. Since neither has a landline, their romance was conducted entirely by cell phone, with Ali spending a third of his $250 monthly salary on phone cards. Meeting was not an option. Though they are both Sunnis, he comes from...
...which arranged marriages are common. But before the war, in big cities like Baghdad and Basra, and especially on their university campuses, young Iraqis could have romantic liaisons and aspire to marry for love, even if that meant crossing the sectarian divide. Among the educated classes, Shi'ite-Sunni unions were not frowned upon. It was even possible to date: in Baghdad, courting couples, often accompanied by a chaperone, would meet at fruit-juice kiosks or ice-cream parlors or in one of the restaurants along the banks of the Tigris. Premarital sex was rare, but the more adventurous lovers...
...Remarkably, Subhi's conservative Sunni family has been very supportive, apparently unconcerned that Terpstra is not a Muslim. "They don't care about her religion," he says. "They are just happy that I have a chance to escape from here." But in Iraq, tolerance has become a rare commodity. Hatred between Iraq's Shi'ites and Sunnis runs so deep that few dare cross the divide and seek partners outside their sect. Jumana Majid, 24, and Abdel-Salaam al-Hilli, 27, both graduate students at Baghdad University, had been involved for three years before he formally asked to marry...
...bombed-out medical clinic for a briefing, with operation maps leaned against a white ceramic tile wall, Odierno and his commanders sitting on boxes and camouflage-fabric campaign chairs in a tight semicircle. The news was good. The enemy was said to be caught in a tightening cordon. Local Sunni insurgents - they claimed to be members of the 1920 Revolution Brigades - had helped to clear the Buhritz neighborhood. After the briefing, Lieut. Colonel Bruce Antonia told me, "Usually everybody's shooting at us. This is the first time we've had any of them on our side...
...inevitable U.S. withdrawal. But it is clear that he and his aides are preparing for the endgame. In Baqubah, General Odierno had told the Iraqis, "It's up to you to make sure [al-Qaeda] doesn't come back." One could only wonder about the fate of Sunni insurgents who had turned against the jihadis. Soon they would be facing a new foe, an Iraqi army and local police that have been notoriously awful in Diyala province - riddled with Shi'ite death squads, incompetence and corruption. Petraeus' "all in" bet relies on the police recruits squatting sullenly in Yusufia, indulging...