Word: sunni
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...bomb was detonated at the Turkish embassy in Baghdad. That attack, of course, may have come in response to one of the most important bits of good news for the coalition forces in months: Turkey has agreed to garrison up to 20,000 troops in the Sunni triangle, potentially relieving an entire U.S. division in the sector that has been the bloodiest for the Americans...
...shaping post-Saddam Iraq. Although U.S. administrator Paul Bremer has sought to assuage the fears of the IGC - particularly its Kurdish members, who see the Turks as threatening their desired autonomy - the Council remains opposed and has won the support of the Arab League. Although the Turks are also Sunni Muslims, there's little reason to suspect that the insurgents will refrain from attacking them - there's no love lost between Iraq's Sunnis and the Turkish military, especially when they're reprising their centuries-old role as occupiers of Iraq. A Turkish deployment will certainly ease the load...
...working with the Americans and over what role their religion should play in government, but there's broad agreement among them that a new order in Iraq should reflect their demographic dominance: Shiites comprise upward of 60 percent of the population, but they have historically been dominated by the Sunni minority comprising around 15 percent. The concern to ensure their dominance may explain the insistence by even moderate Shiites that the new order be shaped by a democratically elected body. And, of course, many Sunnis are unhappy about the prospect of losing their relatively privileged status in a democratic order...
...recently told a congressional committee that already "some Iraqis are beginning to regard us as occupiers and not as liberators"--but no one knows how to get it done anytime soon with any guarantee of success. For one thing, it will be impossible to create a new government without Sunni participation, and the traditional Sunni political party, Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, has been outlawed. "We may have to allow them back, in some form," a U.S. official told me. "But we won't call them Baathists...
...each has problems. The easiest and worst would be to simply turn over authority to the current Governing Council, which has too many questionable Iraqi exiles like Ahmed Chalabi and too little input from the Grand Ayatullah Ali Sistani, the most powerful Shi'a cleric, or the general Sunni populace. The Bush Administration's chosen path is more responsible but too slow--write a new constitution, have a referendum on that constitution and then hold general elections. Colin Powell has set a six-month target for the constitution, but nobody believes it can be done that quickly. Political reality...