For decades, marriages between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq were as ordinary as the daily call to prayer. But the sectarian warfare gripping the country has created a powerful barrier to Sunni-Shiite romances.

Married couples have filed for divorce rather than face the scorn of their neighbors. Fiances have split up as a result of death threats. And, increasingly, young single Iraqis have concluded that it is simply easier to stick to their own kind when it comes to love and family.

In a country where intermarriage was long considered the glue that held a fragile multi-ethnic society together, the romantic segregation of Sunnis and Shiites is more than just a reflection of the ever more hate-filled chasm between the two groups. It is also a grim foreboding of the future.

Sheldon Richman - 9/13/2006

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:)

Gary McGath - 9/13/2006

I shouldn't have been drinking anything while reading that.

Max Schwing - 9/13/2006

This country seems ripe for relationships Romeo and Juliet styles, hopefully not as bad as the original story in its outcome...

The question is, why haven't there be similar clan-lines during Saddam's rulership? As I saw it, the Ba'ath party was largely Sunnit, wouldn't this have increased anti-sunni behaviour in the Shiite populace?

Or did Saddam surpress this distinction entirely?