Word: sunni
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Sectarian Strife PAKISTAN Gunmen riddled Azam Tariq's car with bullets on the outskirts of Islamabad, killing the firebrand Sunni extremist member of Pakistan's National Assembly, three of his bodyguards and a driver. They left behind few clues, but turned up the heat on a long-simmering sectarian war between the country's majority Sunni community and the minority Shi'as. Thousands of Tariq's Sunni supporters rioted in Jhang, his hometown, and also in the normally placid capital, where they torched cars, ransacked markets and burned down a cinema - killing an employee - while police stood by and watched...
...militants and Iranian agents, no group claimed responsibility. In the 1980s and '90s, Sunni-Shi'a tensions led to sporadic violence, promoted by forces from outside: first from Shi'ite Iran and then from the Sunni Arab states. In recent times, the violence has been homegrown. Tariq headed a militant outfit that backed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and denounced Shi'as as infidels, until it was proscribed in 2002 by the government. He and his followers were implicated in the deaths of scores of Shi'as, including more than 50 killed in a July attack on a mosque...
...aggressive public relations effort to spread the news that things aren't so bad in Iraq-a sure sign that things aren't so good. The American military has done wonders in restoring order and building civil society in the north and south of the country. But the Sunni triangle festers, and we are one strategically placed truck bomb-or coordinated sequence of bombs-away from disaster. This sort of uncertainty should be a revelation to the Vice President. His worldview is a simple one, bereft of even the neoconservative romance with exporting democracy. He believes that America...
Whoever is to blame, the Turkish mess made it harder to fight the war. With a substantial force coming down from Turkey, there was a chance--though no certainty--of pacifying the "Sunni triangle" to the north and west of Baghdad, including Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. Instead, Iraqi fighters loyal to Saddam left Baghdad and went home, where, motivated by nationalism and tribal loyalties, they could regroup and plan attacks on American forces. It was not until June--in Operations Desert Scorpion and Peninsula Strike--that the fight was taken to them. One battle, for the town of Dululiyah...
...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...