More than in any other country, Iraq's future is intimately bound up with the fate of self-styled Islamic State (IS).
Air Force Pilots Say They Have No ISIS Targets to Bomb - The Daily Beast - 0 views
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Iraq divisions undermine battle against IS - BBC News - 0 views
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But even if initially successful, such an ambitious project, indeed, any further moves to oust IS, could go badly wrong if the foundations are not sound
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The IS fighters were able to lodge so easily in the Sunni Arab heartlands because the people there had been largely alienated by the sectarian policies and practices of the Shia Arab-dominated Baghdad government under Nouri al-Maliki, who was finally prised out of the prime minister's office in August 2014.
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gislation to empower the Sunnis by devolving security and financial responsibilities to the provinces has not happened.
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Nor have measures to reverse the persecution of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, or the random arrests, detentions, and to assuage other Sunni grievances.
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he US, who have about 3,500 military personnel training and advising Iraqi government forces on the ground, also seems to be aware that military muscle is not enough.
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If that process continues and the militants are defeated, the way Iraq fits together - if it does - will be decided by who pushes them out, and how the resulting vacuum is filled.
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Some residents may still see IS - about 85% of whose fighters in Iraq are believed to be Iraqi - as their protectors against an Iranian-backed, Shia-dominated Baghdad government.
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When the Iraqi army collapsed like a house of cards in the face of the IS eruption in June 2014, it was a motley array of hastily-assembled Shia irregulars, loosely banded into the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) that prevented the militants reaching Baghda
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Ramadi gave a boost to the embattled Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi.He has scant support even from his own Shia Daawa party, and is seen across the board by Sunni, Shia and Kurdish politicians as weak, hesitant, lacking in leadership and unable to stand up to the militias.But there was a down-side to the Ramadi victory too: heavy destruction, and the displacement of the entire population.
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Nor can the formula that finally and slowly worked in Ramadi simply be applied at Mosul. It took government forces with coalition backing seven months to regain Ramadi. Mosul is 10 times bigger.
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He omitted to mention coalition air support, which would also clearly be crucial to the campaign.Some Iraqi analysts believe outside ground forces would also be needed. US military leaders, while reticent, clearly want to up the pace and have not ruled out more boots on the ground. In the absence of serious moves towards national reconciliation, one senior government figure also saw a campaign to retake Mosul as a vital way of forging national unity.
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Egypt's Trouble With Women - The New York Times - 2 views
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The first plane to cross the finish line was piloted by a 26-year-old woman named Lotfia El Nadi, Egypt’s first female aviator.
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22 Arab countries for discrimination in law, sexual harassment and the paucity of female political representation
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Gamal Abdel Nasser, women continued to advance, achieving positions in universities, Parliament and the senior judiciary.
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Egypt’s tradition of moderate Islam recognized women’s rights and encouraged women to study and work.
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Wahhabism has influenced all Islamic societies and movements, including Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.
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many Egyptian women still went without head scarves, wearing modern Western-style dress, yet incidents of sexual harassment were rare. Now, with the spread of the hijab, harassm
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83 percent of women interviewed had been subjected to sexual harassment at least once, and that 50 percent experienced it on a daily basis.
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When ultraconservative doctrine dehumanizes women, reducing them to objects, it legitimizes acts of sexual aggression against them.
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The security apparatus paid thugs, known as “beltagiya,” to gang up on a woman attending a demonstration, tear off her clothes and molest her.
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Tahrir Square in Cairo, soldiers pulled a female protester’s clothes off and dragged her along the ground, stomping on her with their boots
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President Mohamed Morsi’s later attempt to rewrite the Egyptian Constitution would also have removed the only female judge on the Supreme Constitutional Court.
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They tried to overturn the law punishing doctors who carried out female genital mutilation, and refused to consider the marriage of minors as a form of human trafficking by claiming that Islam permitted a girl as young as 10 years old to be married.
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