AP Sunni, Shiite factions carve up Baghdad (UNplanned by US) [View All]

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14627075/

Sunni, Shiite factions carve up Baghdad
Religious tensions surface as Saddam loyalty no longer acts to unify

Updated: 4:38 p.m. CT Sept 1, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Four years ago this was a city where people mixed freely — where, in most parts of town, no one cared if a neighborhood was majority Sunni or Shiite. Loyalty to Saddam Hussein was more important than religious identity.

But now a battle for Baghdad is well under way between the two major Muslim sects. Death squads are slaughtering people daily, and an estimated 160,000 Iraqis have fled their homes — mostly here in the capital.

Out of that violence, a new but not better city is emerging. Many Iraqis fear that the result will be a Sunni west and a Shiite east, with the broad Tigris River snaking through the middle as the sectarian boundary.
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The process ultimately could leave a legacy of bitterness and poison Iraqi society for generations. Each sect has legitimate claims to territory on both sides of the river that they won’t emotionally abandon. And no national Iraqi government can truly function if sectarian “no go” zones are scattered all over the capital........