Word: sectarian
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Iraqi security forces. The checkpoints are an improvement over the open roads that previously prevailed, but they are only as effective as the soldiers manning them. In Madain, as elsewhere in Iraq, the security forces are dominated by Shi'ites. Grigsby is aware of the danger of sectarian bias in their operations...
...anti-American Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. That's not unusual, given that the largely Shi'ite personnel of Iraq's Ministry of Interior have long been seen as a de facto wing of the Mahdi Army. National police are suspected of taking part in the militia's sectarian killings in Baghdad. And in southern Iraq, where al-Sadr is powerful, infiltration of U.S.-trained Iraqi units is common. But even the wariest Americans have trouble believing that Iraqis who look them in the face each day could muster the audacity to try to kill them...
...good dictators. But some are better than others. The best dictators permit freedom of expression, rule of law and economic growth, creating a democratic-minded middle class that eventually pushes them aside. Think South Korea. The worst dictators, by contrast, grind down civil society, breeding poverty and sectarian hatred and pulverizing all the institutions from which liberalism might grow. The worst dictators eventually leave too, but when they do, all hell breaks lose. Think Iraq...
Forget the "benchmarks" that Baghdad's politicians are showing little inclination to meet; the best hope in recent memory for national reconciliation in Iraq came Wednesday in the form of a shootout - not your conventional sectarian or insurgent affair, but a series of penalty kicks that settled an Asian cup soccer semifinal in Iraq's favor. Iraq's upset victory over highly rated South Korea has earned it a showdown on Sunday against - boy, do the gods of soccer ever have a wicked sense of humor - Saudi Arabia. The news drew tens of thousands of Iraqis of all stripes...
...risked life and limb to watch the game together with old soccer pals from opposite sects. For Shi'ite education ministry employee Abdul-Rahman Abdul-Hassan, 40, the tournament had prompted a reunion with three Sunni friends and former teammates he hadn't seen in two years because sectarian violence had forced them into different neighborhoods. "None of our politicians could bring us under this flag like our national football team did," he told The Scotsman. "I wish that politicians could take a lesson from our team, which is made up of Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds who worked together...