Word: sunni
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...While most of the resistance thus far has been confined to Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority, there are worrying signs emerging among the Shiite majority. While the leading clerics and some of the Shiite organizations previously based in Iran have counseled moderation and working with the U.S. authority, the young firebrand Moqtada al-Sadr appears to be wrapping his own bid for supremacy among the Shia in an increasingly strident campaign to confront the occupation, reinforcing his claims to leadership of the streets by channeling popular sentiment over the heads of those taking a more moderate approach. Last weekend...
...fact that most of these attacks have occurred in the "Sunni triangle" stretching north from Baghdad, however, signifies that the insurgency has a distinct social base. Sunni Arabs constitute 15 percent of Iraq's population, but they have dominated its politics and economy for most of the past century. Many of them were not Baathists, but as Iraq expert Professor Juan Cole, of the University of Michigan, notes, the Sunnis enjoyed a privileged status under Baathist rule equivalent to that of white South Africans under apartheid - the state always rewarded them with a disproportionate allocation of resources and opportunities...
...Uncertainty over the future (particularly among the Sunnis), the humiliation of occupation and the breakdown in security and services that has accompanied it has created fertile ground for the insurgency to grow, and the country is awash with weapons distributed by the old regime. An independent assessment commissioned by the Pentagon (downloadable from the Center for Strategic and International Studies warned that defeating the insurgency and winning the peace depends on the coalition very quickly turning around the security situation and restoring normalcy to the lives of ordinary Iraqis. "The 'hearts and minds' of key segments of the Sunni...
...insurgency confined to the Sunni minority can harass and disrupt U.S. efforts for months or even years, but as Bremer has noted it does not represent a strategic threat to the U.S. position in Iraq. That might change, however, if the rebellion extended to the Shiite majority. Two major Shiite parties previously exiled in Iran have, with the blessing of Iraq's Grand Ayatollah, joined the Iraqi Governing Council established by Bremer, and are therefore committed to pursuing their goal of ending the occupation through cooperation with the U.S. But those groups are facing a growing and increasingly militant challenge...
...Shiites. But as President Bush pointed out Wednesday, the killing of the brothers Hussein is a sign that the old regime isn't coming back. Still, even if some Shiites become more inclined to take up arms against the occupation, communal tension remains a huge impediment to cooperation between Sunni and Shiite militants - Sadr's supporters have enraged Sunni clerics by laying claim to their mosques in the predominantly Shiite south. Keeping the Shiites off the battlefield will be a key dimension of U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq. And also a long-term counterinsurgency program and billions of dollars...