Condoleezza Rice said it in January 2007: “There’s still a tendency to see these things in Sunni-Shia terms. But the Middle East is going to have to overcome that.” Five years and counting, Dr. Rice.
“Sunni mobs ‘attack Shia villages in Bahrain,'” from Al-Jazeera, April 11 (thanks to Twostellas):
Bahrainis wielding knives and sticks attacked Shia villagers overnight, witnesses have said, as pressure grew for this month’s Formula One race in the Sunni-ruled state to be cancelled over the unrest.
A day after a gasoline pipe bomb injured seven policemen, men from Sunni neighbourhoods who answered an internet call to avenge the attack converged on Shia-populated villages near Manama late on Tuesday, according to witnesses.
“I saw hundreds of men carrying knives, sticks and other sharp objects,” on the outskirts of several Shia villages, said one man who identified himself only as Hussein.
“They were stopping cars and asking passengers where they lived in order to determine what sect they belonged to,” he said by telephone, referring to the Sunni and Shia communities in Bahrain.
Al-Wefaq, the Gulf kingdom’s largest Shia opposition group, said the attackers were in civilian clothes and “beat up” the residents of Shia villages.
A statement by the group accused security forces of failing to stop the attacks.
“The security forces did not carry out their duty. They did not disperse the [assailants] or prevent them from attacking citizens,” the statement said, adding that the authorities must “deal with these militias”….