Word: sectarianism
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...measure of how much safer Iraq is these days that some 6,000 people jammed Baghdad's basketball stadium last week to attend a public rally for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Two years ago, at the height of Iraq's sectarian civil war, no one would have dared show up, but this warm-up for the March 7 election was a surprisingly relaxed event. The rings of police around the stadium didn't bother to check for car bombs and gave only one brief pat-down for weapons at the entrance. Inside, al-Maliki, though the head...
...Baquba, the provincial capital and center of Iraq's citrus-growing region, is a largely colorless place, except for the winter orange harvest and the hundreds of campaign posters for Sunday's nationwide elections that now line the city's trash-filled streets. Still, at least the sectarian power struggle between Sunnis and Shi'ites that once raged through the city is now mostly confined to the ballot box. (See pictures of Iraq's revival...
...Only 4,000 of the Awakening Council's 23,000 men were given jobs in the police and security forces, according to al-Mojjma. "It's all sectarian," says the sheik, whose headquarters are a concrete hut with no furniture on the eastern edge of Baquba. "The government doesn't trust us because we are Sunni. [But] if they push us any more, we are going to explode." He is particularly worried about what will happen once the U.S. pulls out of Iraq. "Iran will take us," he says. "Everyone in the region will try to occupy Iraq." But what...
...desert border. The group says its aim is to fight for Baluch economic and political rights in Iran's marginalized southwest. But they are set apart from other Baluch outfits warring on the Pakistani side against Islamabad by their staunchly religious character. "The Baluch nationalists aren't really sectarian," says Syed Adnan, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School for International Studies in Singapore. "Jundallah sees itself fighting a Sunni war against the Shi'a Islamic Republic [of Iran...
...likely to annoy the northern Muslim political elite, which has dominated Nigeria's politics for decades. In the strange way of Abuja, the capital, this presidency was meant to be for a northerner. But with Yar'Adua sick and a southern Christian back in power, Nigeria's sectarian divide - which frequently results in large scale Christian-Muslim pogroms - could worsen. "I have no confidence in his leadership," Dr. Baba Ahmed, secretary general of the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria, told TIME. "Jonathan is a frontline member of the Pentecostal church, which is the most vocal against Muslims...