Word: sectarianism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Iraq's reconciliation process clearly still has a long way to go. A number of times during al-Maliki's conciliatory speech, the crowd expressed its enthusiasm in an unabashedly sectarian vocabulary. "We are with you, Ali!" they chanted, referring to the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, whom Shi'ites believe was cheated out of the leadership of the community of the faithful more than 1,000 years ago in the original schism with the Sunnis. (See pictures of Iraqis preparing to vote...
...Historians will debate the causes of Iraq's vicious outpouring of sectarian violence after the American invasion in 2003 - was it a reaction to the suppression of religious identity under Saddam Hussein or an extension of the policies of American administrators who found it easiest to deal with Iraqis through a crude sectarian and ethnic prism? Whatever the cause, the sectarian leaders who prevailed in the elections enabled by the U.S. proved incapable of peacefully resolving their differences, which were instead settled in the streets. But as Iraq's fragile new democracy matures, its ever divisive identity politics are becoming...
...surface, there is a new spirit of national unity. All the political coalitions contesting Sunday's election have at least some semblance of sectarian diversity. Even the most homogeneous of the big blocs pretend to be more diverse than they really are. For example, the Shi'ite Islamist bloc, the Iraqi National Alliance, which critics suspect would like to spin off oil-rich Shi'ite southern Iraq into an autonomous region, includes one Sunni party from Anbar province. When asked, many average Iraqis say sectarian violence was something forced on them by outsiders, a bad dream from which they...
...legacy of postinvasion bloodletting won't go away anytime soon. Almost every family in Iraq has been a victim of some sort of sectarian violence, and thousands of people are still missing. Meanwhile, many of the men and parties responsible for war crimes hold positions of power and are untouchable. "The government tries to stop prosecutions every step of the way, because its hands are dirty too," says Daha Arwai, the head of a Sunni charity that looks after the children and widows of men murdered by sectarian militias. "Ordinary Iraqis now realize that sectarianism was something that was pushed...
...Indeed, Iraq's politicians still play the sectarian card when it suits them. Last month, the Justice and Accountability Commission, a secretive government de-Baathification committee headed by prominent Shi'ite politicians, banned some 500 candidates - most of them Sunni and secular - from running in the parliamentary election, without ever showing any evidence that linked them to the Baath party. Some critics saw the move as a last-minute attempt by al-Maliki's campaign, which had also been running campaign ads showing Saddam-era atrocities against Shi'ites, to reconnect with the Shi'ite political base. The move raised...