As militias arm, civil war threat
'recedes' By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration deliberately
played down the seriousness of the threat
of sectarian civil war in Iraq after the
mass killings of Sunnis in revenge for the destruction
of a revered Shi'ite shrine in Samarra,
despite abundant evidence that even worse
sectarian violence is certain to follow the next
terrorist bombing.
The toll after a week
of sectarian killing, mostly by Shi'ite militias
in revenge for the February 22 bombing of the
Shi'ite Golden Mosque, was 1,300 Iraqis, according
to a report in the
Washington Post on February
28. That was three times as great as was reported
by US and Iraqi officials.
The
administration's response to the killing was to
launch a propaganda offensive to deny that the
sectarian bloodletting presaged civil war and to
claim that its existing policy was working.
National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley
said on February 26 that Iraqi leaders had "stared
into the abyss" and had determined that sectarian
violence was not in their interest. Hadley
insisted that the administration's policy of
"advancing the political agenda and continuing to
train Iraqi security forces" would end terrorist
attacks.
Two days later, US Ambassador
Zalmay Khalilzad said the danger of civil war had
passed.
Last Thursday, the spokesman for
the US command, Major-General Rick Lynch, suggested
that the surge of killings of Sunnis in previous
days "may be just another peak in violence and may
not continue". The commander of US forces in Iraq,
General George Casey, declared, "It appears the
crisis has passed."
However, even as these
officials were seeking to soothe the US public
about the threat of civil war, evidence available
to them showed that both sides were girding for a
much bloodier level of sectarian violence.
Dozens of Sunni preachers had been killed,
and Sunni leaders reported that 37 Sunni mosques
had been destroyed and 86 more vandalized or
damaged by grenades, rockets and gunfire as part
of the Shi'ite retaliatory violence.
More
important, the killings had prompted Sunnis to
prepare for more serious violence in Baghdad and
other mixed Sunni-Shi'ite areas. Nancy Youssef of
Knight-Ridder reported on February 28 that Sunnis
"across Central Iraq" were "alarmed at how easily
Shi'ite forces had attacked their mosques".
Based on interviews with Sunnis in
Fallujah and in Diyala province, Youssef wrote
that they were now organizing militias to fight
Shi'ites in Baghdad and elsewhere, smuggling
weapons into those areas and planning to prepare
to send more fighters there in case of future
attacks. Muqtada al-Sadr said his militiamen had
already captured Sunni weapons being infiltrated
into the capital.
The implication of
Youssef's reporting is that another bomb blast on
a Shi'ite religious target by al-Qaeda operatives
is almost certain to trigger sustained
Sunni-Shi'ite fighting. Two such terrorist
bombings have already been carried out this year.
The administration was particularly
anxious to deny the approaching sectarian civil
war because of the potentially troublesome fact
that preventing such a war has not been its
primary concern. Rather, Washington has continued
to give top priority to its program of turning the
war against Sunni insurgents over to primarily
Shi'ite military units that nurse violent grudges
against the Sunni population.
The
sectarian implications of that policy were
revealed in the bloody revenge killings of Sunnis
last week. In an article in the New York Times on
Sunday, John F Burns quoted US commanders as
reporting that in Baghdad and elsewhere, units of
the Iraqi Army "stood aside", allowing militia
fighters loyal to Muqtada to carry out reprisal
attacks against Sunnis.
The Bush administration
continues to argue that its political strategy is
on track. In fact, administration officials were
well aware that the possibility of a US-brokered
political agreement between Shi'ites and Sunnis
under existing US policy had virtually
disappeared.
Not only have the talks on
forming a new government deadlocked, but the
Shi'ites have taken a hard line against making any
concessions on their control over the means of
state violence.
Khalilzad had
made repeated public threats that the US would
withdraw financial support from the Shi'ites if they
did not give up their grip over sensitive
security posts in the government. But Iraqi
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari issued a pointed
warning to the US ambassador on February 28 that he
should back off from his high-profile pressure on the
Shi'ites in the negotiations.
Zebari, a
Kurd who is a longtime supporter of the US
occupation, declared that such statements were
being seen by Shi'ites as siding with Sunnis and
would "backfire".
The Shi'ites have
responded to US pressure by digging in their heels
on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's bid to
continue in that position in the new government.
The Kurds had joined with Sunnis and secular
parties in opposing Jaafari, but the Shi'ite bloc
has reaffirmed its support for him, with both
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and Muqtada now behind
his candidacy.
If the deadlock over the
formation of new government persists, as now seems
likely, it will certainly encourage both Sunnis
and Shi'ites to hasten their preparations for
civil war.
Khalilzad has been arguing for
months within the administration that the most
important problem in Iraq is the clash between
sectarian political groups. He made that point in
a news conference February 21 - the day before the
bombing in Samarra.
The implication of
such assertions, in the context of the present
policy, is that Khalilzad believes that turning
over the counter-insurgency war to a largely
Shi'ite, anti-Sunni army should be subordinated to
the imperative of making peace between Sunnis and
Shi'ites.
Sunni-Shi'ite tensions are
inevitably heightened by both paramilitary
operations by Shi'ite units in Sunni areas, which
provide cover for anti-Sunni death squads.
Negotiation of a general ceasefire involving Sunni
insurgents, government security forces and
occupation troops would provide a better
atmosphere for negotiations on political issues.
But the Pentagon's interest in building up
the Shi'ite and Kurdish military units has
prevailed over Khalilzad's concerns, as noted in
an article published last week in Foreign Affairs
by Council on Foreign Relations fellow Stephen
Biddle. He notes that US policy has been to "field
an ethnically mixed Iraqi military as quickly as
possible in order to replace US troops",
regardless of whether there is a new political
understanding between Sunnis and Shi'ites.
Biddle calls for the "suspension" of the
US war against the Sunni insurgents as a way of
supporting the effort to prevent civil war,
marking the first time an establishment
publication has broached the subject of making
peace with the Sunni insurgent leaders.
Gareth Porter is an historian
and national security policy analyst. His latest
book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power
and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published
in June 2005.
