Word: sunniness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...time when the United States government supported then-Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who was described by The Economist as a “fundamentalist Sunni dictator,” it is even more important to be clear about academic independence, Lelyveld added in his letter...
Meanwhile, Iraq's political parties are trying to cobble together a coalition government out of the results of the March 7 elections, which produced no clear-cut winner. (Sectarian divisions still define the political scene. A Sunni-supported bloc just barely accumulated the most seats - though nothing close to a majority in the legislature - and is fighting to form a government in the face of a multitude of Shi'ite representatives.) Every organization issued statements or interviews condemning the attacks, using them to take shots at rival groups. "The best solution for Iraq is that the winning political blocs should...
...Sunnis are having none of it. Having boycotted the 2005 election, they participated en masse this time, handing Allawi what they consider to be a clear victory. Some leading members of his bloc have warned that violence would be the consequence if the Iraqiya list were denied what they consider to be their right to lead the government. Iraq's Sunnis have been suspicious of the Shi'ite-led government of al-Maliki, not without reason, and there has been an acute sense of betrayal among the former insurgents who joined the Sunni Awakening, which facilitated the success...
...Until now, the working assumption of Iraqi politics has been that no ethnic group or sect can be excluded from a share of power without the risk of creating dangerous instability. And that may be more true than ever, after the Sunnis came in from the cold, first in turning on al-Qaeda, and then in participating in the election. But despite some perfunctory efforts to include some Sunni representation, addressing Sunni communal aspirations has never been al-Maliki's priority. And the arithmetic of inclusion has become vastly more difficult now that the Sunnis believe they won the election...
...element of truth in that charge, because Iran has previously backed the broad Shi'ite-Kurdish alliance that brought al-Maliki to power, and is clearly pressing for another friendly, Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad. Allawi is fiercely antagonistic toward Tehran, and his bloc was strongly backed by Sunni Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, which are leery of Iranian influence in Arab lands. (Those governments have been standoffish toward al-Maliki.) (See pictures of the U.S. troops in Iraq...