Word: sunni
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...Iraqis, the main talking point was Maliki's failure to secure all-party consensus on the ministries most crucial to Iraq's security - defence, interior and national security. Maliki has appointed a hitherto unknown Sunni, Salam al-Zaubai, as "interim" defense minister. Kurdish leader Barham Saleh is temporarily in charge of national security. And the Prime Minister, a Shi'ite with no previous administrative experience worth the mention, is keeping the interior portfolio to himself until, he says, a more suitable candidate can be found...
...Atwar Bahjat stood out [from the other candidates] because so many of her fellow Iraqis saw her as a courageous voice for unity in a war-torn country,” said Heath. “Bahjat was half-Shiite and half-Sunni and called for unity even in her last broadcast...
...question is exactly what triggered this battle and who fought it. Sunni community leaders claim that local residents grabbed whatever weapons they had to defend their homes from a sectarian attack by Shi'ite militias in government uniforms. They say night guards, akin to an armed neighborhood watch, fired back at roaming gunmen strafing them as they stood watch. However, American officers say the men they ended up fighting weren't mere homeowners. They used the fire and movement techniques of trained soldiers. "These guys who stood and fought were not just neighborhood types," says Markos, a steely artillery officer...
...circles, said last month that Zarqawi had made "many political mistakes" and was now being confined to a military role. Others suspected that lowering his profile was a strategy to put an Iraqi face on even the Islamist element of the insurgency, recognizing that a good portion of the Sunni population was alienated by many of Zarqawi's tactics. Either way, the problem facing the likes of Zarqawi is plain to see at a moment when the nationalist leadership of the insurgency is engaging in talks with the U.S., premised in part on their common antipathy to both Iran...
...then there are the issues. The Kurdish, Sunni and U.S. objections to Jaafari were based less on style than substance, and it's not clear Maliki will be very different: critics, for instance, saw Jaafari as wedded to a sectarian outlook that precluded offering greater power to the Sunnis in the hope of drawing them in, unwilling to rein in the militias associated with his own sect, and (in the case of the Kurds) hostile to a federalism that would allow the creation of de facto-independent regions. One early test will come over the next month as Maliki cobbles...