Word: sunni
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...religious dictatorship would not sit well even among Algeria's fundamentalists, mostly Sunnis who do not exalt clerics to the same degree that Iran's Shi'ites do today. "The concept of theocracy is not something which has roots in Sunni society," says Professor Mary-Jane Deeb of American University's School of International Service in Washington. Algeria's former colonial ties to France also give the country a Western complexion that cannot be easily erased. Most Algerians speak French, many are exposed to European culture through French television and have relatives among their millions of compatriots now living...
...help overthrow Saddam Hussein. Makeshift camps have been set up near Saudi and Kuwaiti border towns for thousands of Shi'ite refugees. While the world's attention is focused on the tragedy of the Kurds, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah has agreed in principle to let anti-Saddam Iraqis, mostly Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, set up training sites as a base for infiltrating Iraq. The Saudis are "much more committed to overthrowing Saddam Hussein than the allies are," says Muwafaq al-Rubai of the Shi'ite al-Dawa party...
...turned very quickly into full- scale fighting." And then to extricate its own troops the U.S. would have become involved in deciding who should govern Iraq, a treacherous choice in the best of times. Organizing a government that could keep the country together among rival Kurds, Shi'ites and Sunni Muslims would have presented as formidable a task as all those doomed attempts, starting in 1963 and continuing for a decade or so, to devise a Vietnamese government that could win popular support...
...Kurds' ethnic roots reach back thousands of years to the dawn of Mesopotamia. They were not actually called Kurds until the 7th century, when most of them converted to Islam. Numbering between 14 million and 28 million, most Kurds are devout Sunni Muslims who speak a western Iranian language related to Farsi. Kurdistan has no official borders, but stretches from the Zagros Mountains in Iran through parts of Iraq, Syria and eastern Turkey. Most Kurds today are farmers who live in small villages noted for their competitive clan structure and unruliness. They have at times even earned a reputation...
...Sunni Muslims, for example in Basra, were joining in the rebellions against Hussein. As Arabs with historic enmity to Persians, the Iraqi Shiites would not have embraced Iran's theocracy. In any case, they deserve the same chance to escape slaughter which the American liberation gave many Kuwaitis. Their lack of oil, an embassy in Washington, and Saudi support does not make their deaths more palatable...