Sectarian strife drives Iraqi families from homes

[leftchick]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060308/wl_nm/iraq_refugees_dc_1

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - When Abu Kathim found a note outside his front door next to a large jar of blood, he knew it was the last day he would spend in his home.


"The note said the blood in the jar belonged to the last Shi'ite they had killed and my blood would replace it if I stayed in Taji," said the distressed 37-year-old, referring to a stronghold of Sunni insurgents north of Baghdad.

A member of Iraq's majority Shi'ite community, Abu Kathim had lived in Taji for 25 years.

Tensions between the Shi'ites and minority Sunnis have been running at fever pitch since the February 22 bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, north of Taji. The attack pushed Iraq the closest to civil war that it has come since the U.S. invasion.

Fearful of sectarian reprisals that have killed hundreds, Shi'ite and Sunni families have been driven from mixed neighborhoods or towns across the country, resettling in areas where their sect is the dominant one.

[Selatius]

1. I hate to draw comparisons, but this reminds me of...

the disintegration of Yugoslavia after the death of Marshall Tito. Ethnic cleansing became an unfortunate feature of that civil war, and the hate is still there today. These conflicts tend to be the most personal out of all conflicts, the most hate and rage filled.