The Sunni-Shiite rift started 1,400 ago

Ethnic hatred becomes entrenched, political solution elusive
Posted on Fri, Mar. 03, 2006
Ethnic hatred in Iraq has become entrenched, political solutions elusive
By Tom Lasseter and Nancy A. Youssef
Knight Ridder Newspapers
BAGHDAD, Iraq

Zeena Ahmed, a Shiite Muslim who lives in a Sunni Muslim neighborhood in western Baghdad, has come up with a plan if a Sunni mob attacks her family. She'll run to the back of the house, scream for help and hope to escape slaughter. She's certain the attack will come.

Alaa al Badri, a Sunni who lives in a Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, has a hard time forgiving himself for not going to the streets with a gun this week when he heard the local Sunni imam calling for help on a loudspeaker, saying that the mosque was under attack. He'd have gone, al Badri said, but he was worried that his Shiite neighbors would slip into his home and murder his wife and children.

More than a week after the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra ignited sectarian fighting that left hundreds dead and dozens of mosques burned, the continued violence and mistrust have made it clear that Iraq's multiethnic society has ruptured and won't soon heal.

Scores of Iraqis like Ahmed and al Badri now cower in their homes, hoping that the next major bombing doesn't provoke unrestrained violence. Interviews this week with ordinary Iraqis, top Iraqi officials and analysts made it clear that the nation, almost three years after the U.S. invasion, is teetering: As politicians stumble to form a unified government almost three months after national elections, hatred and fighting are pushing the nation toward civil war.

Many Iraqis interviewed by Knight Ridder said they're worried that the attack on the Askariya shrine - which houses the remains of two of Shiite Islam's 12 imams - pushed the fight beyond Sunni attacks on Shiites and Shiite militias who are killing Sunnis toward a sustained sectarian war that could last for years.

The commander of the multinational forces in Iraq, Army Gen. George W. Casey, said Friday that religious and ethnic violence is waning after the Samarra bombing and the threat of civil war appears to be receding for now.

The changing character of the conflict could render U.S. strategy irrelevant, however. To date, American forces mainly have fought the Sunni insurgency in a guerrilla war in central and western Iraq. That's far different than having to pick sides in or quell full-blown civil strife.

"If things go further, we are not too concerned about our protection, due to the security of our bases, but hunkering down is no way to fight an insurgency or stop a civil war," a senior U.S. military official in the region said in an e-mail exchange. The official asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "Bottom line: We aren't structured for a civil war, either in troop strength or disposition. It would be a new ballgame."
Before the Samarra bombing, repeated calls for restraint from the leading Shiite cleric in the country, Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, seemed to keep reprisals under control, despite bombings that have killed thousands of innocents in Shiite neighborhoods since 2003.

But when images of the revered Askariya shrine, its huge golden dome turned to rubble, spread through Iraq late last month, chaos followed, despite Sistani's calls for peaceful demonstrations.

The reaction resulted from "an accumulation of frustration during three years of daily car bombs, daily suicide bombs, (insurgents) attacking mosques ... without giving the people the hope there is an end to that, as if they have to live with it," said Adel Abdul-Mahdi, one of Iraq's two vice presidents and an influential member of one of the most powerful Shiite political groups.

The tit-for-tat violence continued this week:

- On Monday, a roadside bomb in southeast Baghdad killed four people and wounded 18 near a Sunni mosque.

- On Tuesday, more than 65 people were killed and at least 150 were injured by a suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives and a series of car bombs in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad. That same day, Iraqi army troops reported finding nine bodies north of Baghdad, including a Sunni tribal sheik and two of his nephews who had been shot to death.

- On Thursday, at least 36 Iraqis were killed in violence that included a bombing in a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad and a car bomb in a Shiite slum.

Sectarian clashes on the streets have provoked unsettling confrontations at the highest levels of government.

On Wednesday, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, a Shiite who has connections to one of the nation's most feared Shiite militias, appeared on national television and complained that government troops were shot by guards at the house of Harith al Dari, Iraq's most powerful hard-line Sunni cleric.

Jabr promised to send more troops to al Dari's house to seek justice.
"We are coming to them very soon, God willing," Jabr said. "We tell them this on TV so they can understand that we are not afraid and that we are coming. We are coming."

Abdul Salam al Qubaisi, an official in al Dari's Muslim Scholars Association, answered, also on national television: "All brothers should protect their mosques."

The United States is finding it harder to be diplomatically effective in this environment of open ethnic confrontation.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, has twisted arms to promote a coalition government of Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds as an antidote to the strife. But since the Dec. 15 election, Iraq's leaders have bickered and floundered over how to form the government.

Khalilzad "can try to create the environment and get individual concessions, but he can't create a dynamic process. Only the Iraqis can do that," said Jon B. Alterman, the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic Studies in Washington.

Some of Iraq's leaders appear to be reaching out. Although the Sunnis walked away from government negotiations after the bombing, they later said they were willing to return.

Alterman said that if Iraq's leaders can't form a government that lessens the violence, the public will lose hope in the political process. In that case, any inhibitions against ethnic groups and their militias taking matters into their own hands could disappear.

"In the next two weeks or so, we will know if this government is relevant," Alterman said. "We will know if there is a political solution to this or not."

Anwar al Shimarti, a Shiite leader in the southern town of Najaf, said in a phone interview this week that the desire for revenge, and not politics, seemed to be gaining ground.

"We held a conference for the tribal sheiks of the middle Euphrates area and the sheiks' ... spirits were boiling inside," said al Shimarti, of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution, a leading Shiite political party. "They wanted to seek vengeance - their hearts are angry and full of revolt - and they want revenge."

Knight Ridder special correspondents Huda Ahmed and Shatha Al Awsy in Baghdad and Qassim Mohammed in Najaf contributed to this report.

Yes, It is a 'Civil War'
U.S.Troops in Iraq Tell McClatchy Reporter: Yes, It is a 'Civil War'
By E&P Staff
Published: August 04, 2006 9:45 PM ET

U.S. generals have had their say this week. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has spoken, so has Secretary of State Rice. Pundits, as usual, have weighed in, and weighed in again. Finally a reporter asked the real experts: U.S. troops in Iraq.

Tom Lasseter, longtime reporter for the Knight Ridder bureau in Baghad -- now run by McClatchy -- is heading back to the U.S. after many tours in Iraq, but before leaving, he took another embed this past week. His report for McClatchy papers today opened, "While American politicians and generals in Washington debate the possibility of civil war in Iraq, many U.S. officers and enlisted men who patrol Baghdad say it has already begun.

"Army troops in and around the capital interviewed in the last week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds."

After detailing the evidence -- as described by U.S. troops -- Lasseter observed, "The recent assertion by U.S. soldiers here that Iraq is in a civil war is a stunning indication that American efforts to bring peace and democracy to Iraq are failing, more than three years after the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein's regime. "

Some Iraqi troops, too, share that assessment. "This is a civil war," a senior adviser to the commander of the Iraqi Army's 6th Division, which oversees much of Baghdad, told Lasseter.

"There's no plan - we are constantly reacting," said a senior American military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I have absolutely no idea what we're going to do."

Staff Sgt. Wesley Ramon had a similar assessment. "It's to the point of being irreconcilable; you know, we've found a lot of bodies, entire villages have been cleared out, we get reports of entire markets being gunned down - and if that's not a marker of a civil war, I don't know what is," said Ramon, of San Antonio, Texas.

Iraqi civil war has already begun, U.S. troops say
Iraqi civil war has already begun, U.S. troops say
By Tom Lasseter
McClatchy Newspapers
8/6/06

1st Lt. Brian Johnson, 24, patrols the western edge of Baghdad. Behind him is a billboard featuring, in the center, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr whose Mahdi Army militia is suspected of torturing and killing Sunnis. American officers and enlisted men in Baghdad say Iraq's civil war has already begun. more photographs
Iraq special reports

BAGHDAD, Iraq - While American politicians and generals in Washington debate the possibility of civil war in Iraq, many U.S. officers and enlisted men who patrol Baghdad say it has already begun.

Army troops in and around the capital interviewed in the last week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds.

"There's one street that's the dividing line. They shoot mortars across the line and abduct people back and forth," said 1st Lt. Brian Johnson, a 4th Infantry Division platoon leader from Houston. Johnson, 24, was describing the nightly violence that pits Sunni gunmen from Baghdad's Ghazaliyah neighborhood against Shiite gunmen from the nearby Shula district.

As he spoke, the sights and sounds of battle grew: first, the rat-a-tat-tat of fire from AK-47 assault rifles, then the heavier bursts of PKC machine guns, and finally the booms of mortar rounds crisscrossing the night sky and crashing down onto houses and roads.

The bodies of captured Sunni and Shiite fighters will turn up in the morning, dropped in canals and left on the side of the road.

"We've seen some that have been executed on site, with bullet holes in the ground; the rest were tortured and executed somewhere else and dumped," Johnson said.

The recent assertion by U.S. soldiers here that Iraq is in a civil war is a stunning indication that American efforts to bring peace and democracy to Iraq are failing, more than three years after the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein's regime.

Some Iraqi troops, too, share that assessment.

"This is a civil war," said a senior adviser to the commander of the Iraqi Army's 6th Division, which oversees much of Baghdad.

"The problem between Sunnis and Shiites is a religious one, and it gets worse every time they attack each other's mosques," said the adviser, who gave only his rank and first name, Col. Ahmed, because of security concerns. "Iraq is now caught in hell."

U.S. hopes for victory in Iraq hinge principally on two factors: Iraqi security forces becoming more competent and Iraqi political leaders persuading armed groups to lay down their weapons.

But neither seems to be happening. The violence has increased as Iraqi troops have been added, and feuding among the political leadership is intense. American soldiers, particularly the rank and file who go out on daily patrols, say they see no end to the bloodshed. Higher ranking officers concede that the developments are threatening to move beyond their grasp.

"There's no plan - we are constantly reacting," said a senior American military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I have absolutely no idea what we're going to do."

The issue of whether Iraq has descended into civil war has been a hot-button topic even before U.S. troops entered Iraq in 2003, when some opponents of the war raised the likelihood that Iraq would fragment along sectarian lines if Saddam's oppressive regime was removed. Bush administration officials consistently rejected such speculation as unlikely to come to fruition.

On Thursday, however, two top American generals told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iraq could slip into civil war, though both stopped well short of saying that one had begun.

Political sensitivity has made some officers here hesitant to use the words "civil war," but they aren't shy about describing the situation that they and their men have found on their patrols.

"I hate to use the word `purify,' because it sounds very bad, but they are trying to force Shiites into Shiite areas and Sunnis into Sunni areas," said Lt. Col. Craig Osborne, who commands a 4th Infantry Division battalion on the western edge of Baghdad, a hotspot of sectarian violence.

Osborne, 39, of Decatur, Ill., compared Iraq to Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed in an orgy of inter-tribal violence in 1994. "That was without doubt a civil war - the same thing is happening here.

"But it's not called a civil war - there's such a negative connotation to that word and it suggests failure," he said.

On the other side of Baghdad, Shiites from the eastern slum of Sadr City and Sunnis from the nearby neighborhood of Adhamiyah regularly launch incursions into each other's areas, setting off car bombs and dragging victims into torture chambers.

"The sectarian violence flip-flops back and forth," said Lt. Col. Paul Finken, who commands a 101st Airborne Division task force that works with Iraqi soldiers in the area. "We find bodies all the time - bound, tortured, shot."

The idea that U.S. forces have been unable to prevent the nation from sliding into sectarian chaos troubles many American military officials in Iraq.

Lt. Col. Chris Pease, 48, the deputy commander for the 101st Airborne's brigade in eastern Baghdad, was asked whether he thought that Iraq's civil war had begun.

"Civil war," he said, and then paused for several moments.

"You've got to understand," said Pease, of Milton-Freewater, Ore., "you know, the United States Army and most of the people in the United States Army, the Marine Corps and the Air Force and the Navy have never really lost at anything."

Pease paused again.

"Whether it is there or not, I don't know," he said.

Pressed for what term he would use to describe the security situation in Iraq, Pease said: "Right now I would say that it's more of a Kosovo, ethnic-cleansing type thing - not ethnic cleansing, it is a sectarian fight - they are bombing; they are threatening to get them off the land."

A human rights report released last month by the United Nations mission in Baghdad said 2,669 civilians were killed across Iraq during May, and 3,149 were killed in June. In total, 14,338 civilians were killed from January to June of this year, and 150,000 civilians were forced out of their homes, the report said.

Pointing to a map, 1st Lt. Robert Murray, last week highlighted a small Shiite village of 25 homes that was abandoned after a flurry of death threats came to town on small pieces of paper.

"The letters tell them if they don't leave in 48 hours, they'll kill their entire families," said Murray, 29, of Franklin, Mass. "It's happening a lot right now. There have been a lot of murders recently; between that and the kidnappings, they're making good on their threats. ... They need to learn to live together. I'd like to see it happen, but I don't know if it's possible."

Riding in a Humvee later that day, Capt. Jared Rudacille, Murray's commander in the 4th Infantry Division, noted the market of a town he was passing through. The stalls were all vacant. The nearby homes were empty. There wasn't a single civilian car on the road.

"Between 1,500 and 2,000 people have moved out," said Rudacille, 29, of York, Pa. "I now see only 15 or 20 people out during the day."

The following evening, 1st Lt. Corbett Baxter was showing a reporter the area, to the west of where Rudacille was, that he patrols.

"Half of my entire northern sector cleared out in a week, about 2,000 people," said Baxter, 25, of Fort Hood, Texas.

Staff Sgt. Wesley Ramon had a similar assessment while on patrol between the Sunni town of Abu Ghraib and Shula, a Shiite stronghold. The main bridge leading out of Shula was badly damaged recently by four bombs placed underneath it. Military officials think the bombers were Sunnis trying to stanch the flow of Shiite militia gunmen coming out of Shula to kill Sunnis.

"It's to the point of being irreconcilable; you know, we've found a lot of bodies, entire villages have been cleared out, we get reports of entire markets being gunned down - and if that's not a marker of a civil war, I don't know what is," said Ramon, 33, of San Antonio, Texas.

Driving back to his base, Johnson watched a long line of trucks and cars go by, packed with families fleeing their homes with everything they could carry: mattresses, clothes, furniture, and, in the back of some trucks, bricks to build another home.

"Every morning that we head back to the patrol base, this is all we see," Johnson said. "These are probably people who got threatened last night."

In Taji, an area north of Baghdad, where the roads between Sunni and Shiite villages have become killing fields, many soldiers said they saw little chance that things would get better.

"I don't think there's any winning here. Victory for us is withdrawing," said Sgt. James Ellis, 25, of Chicago. "In this part of the world they have been fighting for 3,000 years, and we're not going to fix it in three."