Word: sunni
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...Insurgents in Iraq are trying to send the same message. A recruitment video shown to TIME, in a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, suggests that resistance fighters are trying to line up Iraqis for suicide bombings, which U.S. officials have so far thought were mainly the work of foreign fighters. The video features testimonials from five "martyrs"; two speak with Saudi accents, says an interpreter who watched the video, but two others have Iraqi accents. One man, the video claims, bombed the Turkish embassy in Baghdad. Another is identified as a Kurd who bombed a CIA office in Arbil. The video...
...testimonies are contained on a CD produced by the group Jaish Ansar al-Sunni, which Iraqi insurgent sources say has close ties to Ansar al-Islam, a terror affiliate of al-Qaeda that American officials accuse of multiple attacks across Iraq on Western and Iraqi targets. Five of the incidents described on the disc take place in or near the northern Iraqi cities of Mosul, Kirkuk and Erbil. This last city was the scene of two more suicide attacks Sunday morning, when at least 56 people were killed and 235 wounded in an assault on the offices of U.S.-backed...
...video opens set against a mountainous backdrop with religious chanting and fluttering flags. Footage shows U.S. forces arresting Iraqis, with civilians diving for cover or, bleeding, being helped away to seek medical care. An unknown voice then introduces the goals of Jaish Ansar Al Sunni and makes clear that Iraqi religious fundamentalists direct the armed organization. The voice speaks of a desire to defeat the American "infidels," but also to set up an Islamic state not controlled by "treacherous agents" loyal to the United States and Israel...
Many of the indigenous jihadists in Iraq practice Salafism, a stringent brand of Sunni Islam that was brutally repressed by Saddam's regime after it began gaining adherents in Iraq a decade ago. A Salafist who claims to be a "manager" of an insurgent cell based near Balad says his group is part of a resistance movement called Mujahedi al-Salafiyah. The man, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Ali, says the Salafists model themselves on the mujahedin who drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s and on other international jihad movements. He says the Salafists...
...sound. But he says the U.N.'s concerns about direct elections are based on a lack of security in Iraq, which was made tragically apparent by the attack on U.N. headquarters in Baghdad last August. U.S. and U.N. officials privately say, however, the real concern is that Iraq's Sunnis, already a minority, are so poorly organized that direct elections would lead to a Shi'ite monopoly. That not only would stoke the flames of a potential Sunni rebellion but also could prompt Sunni states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to refuse to recognize the new Iraq and pave...