“Sunnis are just like the puppies of a filthy dog,” he said. “Even the purest among them is dirty.”
September 9, 2007 10:42 am Iraq, Islamism beyond the ShibbolethsAt Street Level, Unmet Goals of Troop Buildup - New York Times, September 9, 2007
The hulking blast walls that the Americans have set up around many neighborhoods have only intensified the city’s sense of balkanization. Merchants must now hire a different driver for individual areas, lest gunmen kill a stranger from another sect to steal a truckload of T-shirts….
Abu Sajat, one of several Mahdi leaders known to Captain Feese’s unit, says he commands several hundred fighters in Huriya, Washash, Iskan and Topchi, a cluster of middle- and working-class areas that have become increasingly violent, and more Shiite, in recent months.
He showed up wearing a brown shirt unbuttoned to his sternum, dark sunglasses and brown polyester pants with a belt that had missed several loops toward the back.
Pulling his belt over a sizable stomach, he bragged that they were playing a game of cat and mouse with the Americans in which the Mahdi Army always has more men, more loyalty among Baghdad’s residents and more freedom of movement. Huriya, he said, was stable because the Sunnis were gone, not because the Americans had arrived.
“They can’t break up our organization,” he said. “If you count all the Americans in Iraq, they are really just prisoners.”