Talk:Sunni Triangle

Restore Article?
One user deleted 90% of this article for being "unreferenced" in March 2013, and now we just have an all-but-empty stub. My inclination would be to restore most of the deleted content and focus on sourcing it, rather than leaving such a barren article. Thoughts and feelings? Jordanp (talk) 00:00, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

(Q. Who coined this term? How old is it?  Some people say it's a recent (2003) coinage of the US news media and has no equivalent in Arabic.  Can anyone clarify?)


 * The first record I have of it is a San Francisco Chronicle article of September 14, 2002 in which the former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter says: "We may be able to generate support for an invasion among some of the Shiites and some of the Kurds, but to get to Baghdad you must penetrate the "Sunni Triangle." " The term is next used in a New York Times article of September 29, 2002 which says: "This town [i.e. Ramadi], the center of the Arab-Sunni triangle, with Baghdad, Mosul and the Jordan border as points, is the home of powerful Sunni Arab clans, including the Dulaimi clan." My guess is that the term was in use among Iraq experts before it was adoptd by the media as a whole (which only seems to have happened in June 2003, after the publication of another NYT article which featured the term prominently). -- ChrisO 14:26, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I am impressed. Calling the sunnis a "sectarian group" is exceptionaly inaccurate as well as an exercise of pre-judgement and even racism. Sunni muslims are not a sectarian group, and also is extremely rude to depict them more or less as the Baazists, as the article implies. I suggest describing sunni muslims simply as sunni muslims, not as a sectarian group. Will we call protestant christians as a "sectarian group" to which belonged war criminals such as George W. Bush? I guess not. So why apply this term to sunni muslims, then? I am not qualified to write what sunni muslims are, but I am pretty sure there will be a lot of people who could find a better term and not just a "sectarian group" related to Saddam Hussein. It's simply a lie. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.35.36.24 (talk • contribs) 02:46, 21 December 2005.


 * Regarding this, Sunni Islam describes it as a "denomination", which sounds pretty fair to me. CDC (talk) 16:39, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Inaccurate article name
Shouldn’t it be Iraq Sunni Triangle, or something similar? --Tarawneh 04:18, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok more than two months with no comment, Article moved --Tarawneh 03:02, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't particularly object strongly, but I'll also note that JSTOR didn't find any uses of "Sunni Triangle" that did not refer to Iraq (see below); I haven't checked any other sources. So while precision is good, I think Sunni Triangle was just fine. CDC (talk) 17:17, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Earlier uses of the term
A JSTOR search turns up four uses of "Sunni Triangle" in reference to central Iraq between 1978 and 1992:

Some Reflections on the Sunni/Shi'i Question in Iraq, by Peter Sluglett & Marion Farouk-Sluglett Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies) 1978.
 * After the violent upheavals of 1958 and later power passed from the hands of urban notables and old-style 'nationalist' army officers, and now rests with a small network of petit bourgeois from Takrit, Rawa (Rawa), `Ana (`Ana), and Haditha, small towns on the Euphrates in one of the corners of what Kelidar has aptly called the 'Sunni triangle'.

Abbas Kelidar's work cited by this article is Iraq, the search for stability, 1975. London: Institute for the Study of Conflict. That might be a good place to look for an early use of the term. Sluglett & Farouk-Sluglett's use of the term is quoted by Joe Stork, Iraq and the war in the Gulf, MERIP Reports 1981.

Farouk-Sluglett also uses the term in a 1984 review of a book in Arabic by Iraqi economist `Isam al-Khafaji, Iraq's transition to capitalism:
 * Having made this clear, al-Khafaji traces the origins of the most important supporters of the regime back to the "Sunni triangle", in particular to the small towns on the Euphrates. There, socioeconomic relations where quite different from those prevailing in the south...

A usage in 1992: Why the Uprisings Failed, Faleh Abd al-Jabbar, Middle East Report 1992.
 * ...dividing Iraq into three zones: the south, the mostly Shi'i sector; the north, comprising the Kurdish sector, and the middle swath made up of Baghdad and its environs, together with the towns of the so-called "Sunni triangle" running from Baghdad north along the Tigris River to Mosul west to the Syrian border.

...whew. So I guess I'd say ChrisO's 2004 comment, above, seems about right; the term has a long history of infrequent use by academic Iraq experts. According to the 1978 source above, Abbas Kelidar may have coined the term in the mid-1970s, but it would be best to check the work directly to see if he seems to be borrowing the term too. CDC (talk) 16:39, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

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