In addition to lingering terrorism, Iraqis have recently fallen prey to a more insidious threat, with casualties inflicted by violence between the country’s two major religious sects, Sunnis and Shiites, constantly on the rise. The deteriorating security situation sounds the alarm over a possible all-out civil war. While refraining from outspoken predictions, observers have warned of the disastrous consequences of this escalating violence.
　　The current string of bombings and killings was triggered by an attack on one of Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrines late last month. On February 22, a deadly explosion hit the Askariya Mosque in the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad, reducing its gleaming golden dome to shambles. The blast sparked what Reuters called “the worst sectarian violence the country has seen since the fall of Saddam Hussein.”
　　Huge protests erupted in Shiite parts of Baghdad and in cities throughout the Shiite heartland to the south. Protesters marched through the streets by the thousands, many shouting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans and burning those nations’ flags. Militants also attacked Sunni mosques in retaliation. Some 200 mosques were attacked in the aftermath of the Askariya bombing.
　　The Iraqi Government said 379 people had been killed and 458 wounded by February 28 in the sectarian violence tied to the bombing. However, the casualties are mounting, with more attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere in the war-torn nation.
　　
　　Simmering differences
　　
　　Tian Wenlin, an expert on Middle East issues with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, pointed out that the hostility between Shiites and Sunnis is deep-rooted. According to him, during Saddam Hussein’s reign, Shiites were suppressed, for which some Shiites blamed the Sunnis. After the regime was overthrown, however, they fell victim to anti-U.S. Sunni militants. The terrorist group Al Qaeda in Iraq led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi targeted them as well, regarding the Shiites as co-conspirators with the United States.
　　Tian told Beijing Review that the Askariya Mosque is a religious monument of vital importance to the Shiites, and therefore its bombing touched a most sensitive nerve among the Shiites. It is believed that the mosque, which draws Shiite pilgrims from throughout the Islamic world, is located near the place where the last of the 12 Shiite imams, Mohammed al-Mahdi, disappeared. Al-Mahdi was the son and the grandson of the two imams buried there. Shiites believe he is still alive and will return to restore justice to humanity.
　　SHIITE OUTRAGE: Shiites in north Iraq’s Kirkuk rise in protest over the bombing of the Askariya Mosque
　　“The mosque itself can be restored but not the sacred items, something that is intolerable to the Shiites,” said Tian. It was a combination of old scores and a new embarrassment that had led to the violent eruption of Shiite discontent, he said.
　　Tian also said the violence has made it more difficult for a united Iraqi Government to materialize. The Sunnis and Shiites have glaring differences over issues such as the amendment of the Constitution, distribution of oil revenues and how to deal with former Baath Party members.
　　For the United States, which is trying to build democracy in the country, Tian believes Iraq’s worsening security has delivered a heavy blow, adding that the turbulent situation there is detrimental to the U.S. global strategy. Referring to the anti-U.S. slogans chanted in Shiite demonstrations, the expert pointed out that some Shiites blamed the United States for introducing terrorism to their country.
　　The open conflicts between Shiites and Sunnis underscore a trend toward a disintegrating Iraqi society, Tian said. He pointed out that sectarian differences that remained masked under Saddam’s high-handed policies have become evident since the Iraq war in 2003 and armed conflicts have become more frequent. He said Shiites and Sunnis were fleeing from each other’s settlements in some regions.
　　Today’s Iraq is dominated by three separate forces--Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds--each with its own militia, pointed out Tian. “If Sunnis and Shiites are caught in a violent spiral, the chances of a civil war will be substantially increased.”
　　Civil war?
　　Shortly after the Askariya Mosque bombing, The New York Times carried an article titled “What Civil War Could Look Like,” painting grave scenarios for the Middle East region in case an Iraqi civil war breaks out.
　　The article noted that an unrestrained civil war would not only give birth to warring Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish enclaves inside Iraq, but that the violence could also spread unpredictably through the region. It might well incite sectarian conflicts in neighboring countries and, even worse, draw these countries into taking sides in Iraq itself, it said.
　　Meanwhile, the article outlined a pattern of alliance in the wake of a possible Iraqi civil war: Iran would side with the Shiites. Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait would feel a need to defend Sunnis or perhaps to create buffer states for themselves along Iraq’s borders. Turkey might also feel compelled to move in, to protect Iraq’s Turkoman minority against a Kurdish state in the north.
　　“A civil war in Iraq would be a kind of earthquake affecting the whole Middle East,” the paper quoted Terje Roed-Larsen, the special United Nations envoy for Lebanon and previously for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as saying. “It would deepen existing cleavages and create new cleavages in a part of the world that is already extremely fragile and extremely dangerous. I’m not predicting this will happen, but it is a plausible worst-case scenario.”
　　According to Jeremy Greenstock, former British senior representative in Baghdad, Iraq is slipping into a state of low-level civil war, and troops in the U.S.-led foreign coalition will probably need to stay for some time to help keep peace among rival ethnic and religious groups.
　　“One could almost call it a low-level civil war already,” Greenstock told a British television station on February 26. He said that while he did not think a “classic civil war” would develop, he feared local communities would look increasingly to militias for protection rather than the central authorities in Baghdad.
　　Asked what Washington would do if civil war broke out in Iraq, U.S. President George W. Bush told ABC News on February 28, “I don’t buy your premise that there’s going to be a civil war.” He said he had spoken to leaders of all Iraqi sects and “heard loud and clear that they understand that they’re going to choose unification. We’re going to help them do so.”
　　
　　Glimmer of hope
　　
　　Expressing concern over the dangerous tendency of purely terrorist attacks being turned into sectarian violence in the name of retaliation, Tian said he did not think a civil war was imminent. “Personally, I think the current tension will gradually easy off,” he said, “though it will cast a psychological shadow on both Shiites and Sunnis, deepening their existing divide.”
　　Tian said it was the precise aim of the terrorists to plunge Iraq into chaos and added that Al Qaeda was suspected of being responsible for the Askariya bombing. If they let the situation degenerate into a civil war, the Iraqi leaders would play right into the hands of the terrorists. That is why top Sunni and Shiite leaders have called for restraint and stability, Tian said.
　　Iraqi leaders met on February 26, joined by the U.S. ambassador. After three hours of talks, they appeared live on television to affirm their commitment to U.S.-sponsored efforts to forge a national unity government and call for an end to sectarian strife. Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said, “The Iraqi people have one enemy. It is terrorism and only terrorism. There are no Sunnis against Shiites or Shiites against Sunnis.”
　　Sunni leader Tareq al-Hashemi called the meeting “a first step in the right direction” but his Accordance Front would not rejoin formal coalition talks immediately. It announced a boycott in protest over what it called the Shiite-led interim government’s role in fomenting reprisal attacks on Sunnis. “We agreed...we need to form a government as quickly as possible,” Hashemi said, but the Accordance Front wanted progress on its complaints about violence before taking part in the talks.
　　In an effort to curb the rising violence, the Iraqi authorities have imposed a series of daytime curfews in violence-prone regions, including the capital city. Though this stemmed the violence to some extent, it failed to halt the killings completely. “This government took the right step in imposing a curfew, but it is a temporary solution,” Iraqi political analyst Mustafa al-Ani told Reuters. “If these incidents happen again and again, people will stop heeding the curfew and it will lose control.”
　　Professor Gong Shaopeng of the China Foreign Affairs University cited an old Chinese saying, “Misfortune may be good luck in disguise.” It is his belief that the crisis, if handled properly, could be turned into a good opportunity for establishing a new government that exercises effective administration of the country.
　　He said a favorable environment free of sectarian conflicts should be created before the commonly recognized goal of a self-governing Iraq can be realized. Only when parties representing different religious and ethnic groups participate in the administration of the country, can a win-win situation be arrived at, he added.
　　Saying all parties and ethnic groups were losers in the current crisis, he stressed that it was imperative that leaders of all sects put aside their hostility and rein in extremist acts. The professor called on them to sit down at the negotiating table to defuse the crisis. Dialogue, rather than violence, holds the key to national unity and prosperity in the long-suffering country, he noted.

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