The Next Iraqi War? Sectarianism and Civil Conflict 

Middle East Report N°52 
27 February 2006 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The bomb attack on a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra on 22 February 2006 and subsequent reprisals against Sunni mosques and killings of Sunni Arabs is only the latest and bloodiest indication that Iraq is teetering on the threshold of wholesale disaster. Over the past year, social and political tensions evident since the removal of the Baathist regime have turned into deep rifts. Iraq's mosaic of communities has begun to fragment along ethnic, confessional and tribal lines, bringing instability and violence to many areas, especially those with mixed populations. The most urgent of these incipient conflicts is a Sunni-Shiite schism that threatens to tear the country apart. Its most visible manifestation is a dirty war being fought between a small group of insurgents bent on fomenting sectarian strife by killing Shiites and certain government commando units carrying out reprisals against the Sunni Arab community in whose midst the insurgency continues to thrive. Iraqi political actors and the international community must act urgently to prevent a low-intensity conflict from escalating into an all-out civil war that could lead to Iraq's disintegration and destabilise the entire region.

2005 will be remembered as the year Iraq's latent sectarianism took wings, permeating the political discourse and precipitating incidents of appalling violence and sectarian "cleansing". The elections that bracketed the year, in January and December, underscored the newly acquired prominence of religion, perhaps the most significant development since the regime's ouster. With mosques turned into party headquarters and clerics outfitting themselves as politicians, Iraqis searching for leadership and stability in profoundly uncertain times essentially turned the elections into confessional exercises. Insurgents have exploited the post-war free-for-all; regrettably, their brutal efforts to jumpstart civil war have been met imprudently with ill-tempered acts of revenge. 

In the face of growing sectarian violence and rhetoric, institutional restraints have begun to erode. The cautioning, conciliatory words of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiites' pre-eminent religious leader, increasingly are falling on deaf ears. The secular centre has largely vanished, sucked into the maelstrom of identity politics. U.S. influence, while still extremely significant, is decreasing as hints of eventual troop withdrawal get louder. And neighbouring states, anxious to protect their strategic interests, may forsake their longstanding commitment to Iraq's territorial integrity if they conclude that its disintegration is inevitable, intervening directly in whatever rump states emerge from the smoking wreckage.

If Iraq falls apart, historians may seek to identify years from now what was the decisive moment. The ratification of the constitution in October 2005, a sectarian document that both marginalised and alienated the Sunni Arab community? The flawed January 2005 elections that handed victory to a Shiite-Kurdish alliance, which drafted the constitution and established a government that countered outrages against Shiites with indiscriminate attacks against Sunnis? Establishment of the Interim Governing Council in July 2003, a body that in its composition prized communal identities over national-political platforms? Or, even earlier, in the nature of the ousted regime and its consistent and brutal suppression of political stirrings in the Shiite and Kurdish communities that it saw as threatening its survival? Most likely it is a combination of all four, as this report argues.

Today, however, the more significant and pressing question is what still can be done to halt Iraq's downward slide and avert civil war. Late in the day, the U.S. administration seems to have realised that a fully inclusive process - not a rushed one - is the sine qua non for stabilisation. This conversion, while overdue, is nonetheless extremely welcome. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's intensive efforts since late September 2005 to bring the disaffected Sunni Arab community back into the process have paid off, but only in part. He is now also on record as stating that the U.S. is "not going to invest the resources of the American people to build forces run by people who are sectarian". Much remains to be done, however, to recalibrate the political process further and move the country on to a path of reconciliation and compromise.

  a.. First, the winners of the December 2005 elections, the main Shiite and Kurdish lists, must establish a government of genuine national unity in which Sunni Arab leaders are given far more than a token role. That government, in turn, should make every effort to restore a sense of national identity and address Iraqis' top priorities: personal safety, jobs and reliable access to basic amenities such as electricity and fuel. It should also start disbanding the militias that have contributed to the country's destabilisation. The U.S. has a critical role to play in pressuring its Iraqi war-time allies to accept such an outcome. States neighbouring Iraq as well as the European Union should push toward the same goal. 
  b.. Secondly, substantive changes must be made to the constitution once the constitutional process is reopened one month after the government enters office. These should include a total revision of key articles concerning the nature of federalism and the distribution of proceeds from oil sales. As it stands, this constitution, rather than being the glue that binds the country together, has become both the prescription and blueprint for its dissolution. Again, the U.S. and its allies should exercise every effort to reach that goal. 
  c.. Thirdly, donors should promote non-sectarian institution building by allocating funds to ministries and projects that embrace inclusiveness, transparency and technical competence and withholding funds from those that base themselves on cronyism and graft. 
  d.. Fourthly, while the U.S. should explicitly state its intention to withdraw all its troops from Iraq, any drawdown should be gradual and take into account progress in standing up self-sustaining, non-sectarian Iraqi security forces as well as in promoting an inclusive political process. Although U.S. and allied troops are more part of the problem than they can ever be part of its solution, for now they are preventing - by their very presence and military muscle - ethnic and sectarian violence from spiralling out of control. Any assessment of the consequences, positive and negative, that can reasonably be anticipated from an early troop withdrawal must take into account the risk of an all-out civil war.
  e.. Finally - and regrettable though it is that this is necessary - the international community, including neighbouring states, should start planning for the contingency that Iraq will fall apart, so as to contain the inevitable fall-out on regional stability and security. Such an effort has been a taboo, but failure to anticipate such a possibility may lead to further disasters in the future. 
RECOMMENDATIONS

To the Winners of the December 2005 Elections:

1.  Strongly condemn sectarian-inspired attacks, such as the bombing of the al-Askariya shrine in Samarra but also reprisal attacks, and urge restraint. 

2.  Establish a government of national unity that enjoys popular credibility by:

  (a)  including members of the five largest electoral coalitions;

  (b)  dividing the key ministries of defence, interior, foreign affairs, finance, planning and oil fairly between these same lists, with either defence or interior being given to a respected and non-sectarian Sunni Arab leader, and the other to a similar leader of the United Iraqi Alliance; 

  (c)  assigning senior government positions to persons with technical competence and personal integrity chosen from within the ministry; and

  (d)  adopting an agenda that prioritises respect for the rule of law, job creation and provision of basic services.

3.  Revise the constitution's most divisive elements by: 

  (a)  establishing administrative federalism on the basis of provincial boundaries, outside the Kurdish region; and 

  (b)  creating a formula for the fair, centrally-controlled, nationwide distribution of oil revenues from both current and future fields, and creating an independent agency to ensure fair distribution and prevent corruption. 

4.  Halt sectarian-based attacks and human rights abuses by security forces, by:

  (a)  beginning the process of disbanding militias, integrating them into the new security forces so as to ensure their even distribution throughout these forces' hierarchies, at both the national and local levels;

  (b)  continuing to build the security forces (national army, police, border guards and special forces, as well as the intelligence agencies) on the basis of ethnic and religious inclusiveness, with members of Iraq's various communities distributed across the hierarchies of those forces as well as within the governorates; 

  (c)  ensuring that the ministers of defence and interior, as well as commanders and senior officers at both the national and local level are appointed on the basis of professional competence, non-sectarian outlook and personal integrity; and 

  (d)  establishing an independent commission, accountable to the council of deputies, to oversee the militias' dismantlement and the creation of fully integrated security forces.

5.  In implementing de-Baathification, judge former Baath party members on the basis of crimes committed, not political beliefs or religious convictions, and establish an independent commission, accountable to the council of deputies, to oversee fair and non-partisan implementation. Both former Baathis and non-Baathis suspected of human rights crimes or corruption should be held accountable before independent courts.

To the Government of the United States: 

6.  Press its Iraqi allies to constitute a government of national unity and, in particular, seek to prevent the defence and interior ministries from being awarded to the same party or to strongly sectarian or otherwise polarising individuals.

7.  Encourage meaningful amendments to the constitution to produce an inclusive document that protects the fundamental interests of all principal communities, as in recommendation 3 above.

8.  Assist in building up security forces that are not only adequately trained and equipped, but also inclusive and non-sectarian. 

9.  Engage Iraq's neighbours, including Iran, in helping solve the crisis by taking the measures described in recommendation 11 below, and actively promote the reconciliation conference agreed to in Cairo in November 2005, encouraging representatives of all Iraqi parties and communities, as well as of governments in the region, to attend.

To Donors:

10.  Allocate funding to ministries and government projects, as well as civil society initiatives, strictly according to their compliance with principles of inclusiveness, transparency and competence.

To States Neighbouring Iraq:

11.  Help stabilise Iraq by:

  (a)  expressing or reiterating their strategic interest in Iraq's territorial integrity;

  (b)  encouraging the winners of the December 2005 elections to form a government of national unity and accede to demands to modify the constitution (as outlined in recommendation 3 above); 

  (c)  strengthening efforts to prevent funds and insurgents from crossing their borders into Iraq; and 

  (d)  promoting, and sending representatives to, the planned reconciliation conference in Baghdad.

Amman/Baghdad/Brussels, 27 February 2006



FULL REPORT:-

THE NEXT IRAQI WAR?

SECTARIANISM AND CIVIL CONFLICT

Middle East Report N°52 - 27 February 2006



TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS i

I. INTRODUCTION: ESCALATING SECTARIAN VIOLENCE * 

II. ROOTS OF SECTARIANISM *

A. Before April 2003 *

B. CPA Policies *

C. Constitution-Making *

III. The new SECTARIANISM *

A. Zarqawi's Sectarian Agenda *

B. SCIRI and Badr Seize Control *

C. Religion as the Principal Source of Political Mobilisation *

IV. ERODING RESTRAINTS *

A. Weakening of the U.S.-Backed Central State *

B. Ayatollah Sistani's Waning Influence *

C. The Absence of Viable Non-Sectarian Alternatives *

D. Changing Posture of Neighbouring States? *

V. The December 2005 Elections *

VI. Conclusion *

APPENDICES



  a.. Map of Iraq 35


  b.. Index of Names 36


  c.. Seat Allocation Following December 2005 Elections 38


  d.. About the International Crisis Group 39


  e.. Crisis Group Reports and Briefings on the Middle East and North Africa 40


  f.. Crisis Group Board of Trustees 42





Middle East Report N°52 27 February 2006

THE NEXT IRAQI WAR? SECTARIANISM AND CIVIL CONFLICT

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The bomb attack on a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra on 22 February 2006 and subsequent reprisals against Sunni mosques and killings of Sunni Arabs is only the latest and bloodiest indication that Iraq is teetering on the threshold of wholesale disaster. Over the past year, social and political tensions evident since the removal of the Baathist regime have turned into deep rifts. Iraq's mosaic of communities has begun to fragment along ethnic, confessional and tribal lines, bringing instability and violence to many areas, especially those with mixed populations. The most urgent of these incipient conflicts is a Sunni-Shiite schism that threatens to tear the country apart. Its most visible manifestation is a dirty war being fought between a small group of insurgents bent on fomenting sectarian strife by killing Shiites and certain government commando units carrying out reprisals against the Sunni Arab community in whose midst the insurgency continues to thrive. Iraqi political actors and the international community must act urgently to prevent a low-intensity conflict from escalating into an all-out civil war that could lead to Iraq's disintegration and destabilise the entire region.

2005 will be remembered as the year Iraq's latent sectarianism took wings, permeating the political discourse and precipitating incidents of appalling violence and sectarian "cleansing". The elections that bracketed the year, in January and December, underscored the newly acquired prominence of religion, perhaps the most significant development since the regime's ouster. With mosques turned into party headquarters and clerics outfitting themselves as politicians, Iraqis searching for leadership and stability in profoundly uncertain times essentially turned the elections into confessional exercises. Insurgents have exploited the post-war free-for-all; regrettably, their brutal efforts to jumpstart civil war have been met imprudently with ill-tempered acts of revenge. 

In the face of growing sectarian violence and rhetoric, institutional restraints have begun to erode. The cautioning, conciliatory words of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiites' pre-eminent religious leader, increasingly are falling on deaf ears. The secular centre has largely vanished, sucked into the maelstrom of identity politics. U.S. influence, while still extremely significant, is decreasing as hints of eventual troop withdrawal get louder. And neighbouring states, anxious to protect their strategic interests, may forsake their longstanding commitment to Iraq's territorial integrity if they conclude that its disintegration is inevitable, intervening directly in whatever rump states emerge from the smoking wreckage.

If Iraq falls apart, historians may seek to identify years from now what was the decisive moment. The ratification of the constitution in October 2005, a sectarian document that both marginalised and alienated the Sunni Arab community? The flawed January 2005 elections that handed victory to a Shiite-Kurdish alliance, which drafted the constitution and established a government that countered outrages against Shiites with indiscriminate attacks against Sunnis? Establishment of the Interim Governing Council in July 2003, a body that in its composition prized communal identities over national-political platforms? Or, even earlier, in the nature of the ousted regime and its consistent and brutal suppression of political stirrings in the Shiite and Kurdish communities that it saw as threatening its survival? Most likely it is a combination of all four, as this report argues.

Today, however, the more significant and pressing question is what still can be done to halt Iraq's downward slide and avert civil war. Late in the day, the U.S. administration seems to have realised that a fully inclusive process - not a rushed one - is the sine qua non for stabilisation. This conversion, while overdue, is nonetheless extremely welcome. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad's intensive efforts since late September 2005 to bring the disaffected Sunni Arab community back into the process have paid off, but only in part. He is now also on record as stating that the U.S. is "not going to invest the resources of the American people to build forces run by people who are sectarian". Much remains to be done, however, to recalibrate the political process further and move the country on to a path of reconciliation and compromise.


  a.. First, the winners of the December 2005 elections, the main Shiite and Kurdish lists, must establish a government of genuine national unity in which Sunni Arab leaders are given far more than a token role. That government, in turn, should make every effort to restore a sense of national identity and address Iraqis' top priorities: personal safety, jobs and reliable access to basic amenities such as electricity and fuel. It should also start disbanding the militias that have contributed to the country's destabilisation. The U.S. has a critical role to play in pressuring its Iraqi war-time allies to accept such an outcome. States neighbouring Iraq as well as the European Union should push toward the same goal. 


  b.. Secondly, substantive changes must be made to the constitution once the constitutional process is reopened one month after the government enters office. These should include a total revision of key articles concerning the nature of federalism and the distribution of proceeds from oil sales. As it stands, this constitution, rather than being the glue that binds the country together, has become both the prescription and blueprint for its dissolution. Again, the U.S. and its allies should exercise every effort to reach that goal. 


  c.. Thirdly, donors should promote non-sectarian institution building by allocating funds to ministries and projects that embrace inclusiveness, transparency and technical competence and withholding funds from those that base themselves on cronyism and graft. 


  d.. Fourthly, while the U.S. should explicitly state its intention to withdraw all its troops from Iraq, any drawdown should be gradual and take into account progress in standing up self-sustaining, non-sectarian Iraqi security forces as well as in promoting an inclusive political process. Although U.S. and allied troops are more part of the problem than they can ever be part of its solution, for now they are preventing - by their very presence and military muscle - ethnic and sectarian violence from spiralling out of control. Any assessment of the consequences, positive and negative, that can reasonably be anticipated from an early troop withdrawal must take into account the risk of an all-out civil war.


  e.. Finally - and regrettable though it is that this is necessary - the international community, including neighbouring states, should start planning for the contingency that Iraq will fall apart, so as to contain the inevitable fall-out on regional stability and security. Such an effort has been a taboo, but failure to anticipate such a possibility may lead to further disasters in the future. 

Recommendations

To the Winners of the December 2005 Elections:


  a.. Strongly condemn sectarian-inspired attacks, such as the bombing of the al-Askariya shrine in Samarra but also reprisal attacks, and urge restraint. 


  b.. Establish a government of national unity that enjoys popular credibility by:


    1.. including members of the five largest electoral coalitions;


    2.. dividing the key ministries of defence, interior, foreign affairs, finance, planning and oil fairly between these same lists, with either defence or interior being given to a respected and non-sectarian Sunni Arab leader, and the other to a similar leader of the United Iraqi Alliance; 


    3.. assigning senior government positions to persons with technical competence and personal integrity chosen from within the ministry; and


    4.. adopting an agenda that prioritises respect for the rule of law, job creation and provision of basic services.


  c.. Revise the constitution's most divisive elements by: 


    1.. establishing administrative federalism on the basis of provincial boundaries, outside the Kurdish region; and 


    2.. creating a formula for the fair, centrally-controlled, nationwide distribution of oil revenues from both current and future fields, and creating an independent agency to ensure fair distribution and prevent corruption. 


  d.. Halt sectarian-based attacks and human rights abuses by security forces, by:


    1.. beginning the process of disbanding militias, integrating them into the new security forces so as to ensure their even distribution throughout these forces' hierarchies, at both the national and local levels;


    2.. continuing to build the security forces (national army, police, border guards and special forces, as well as the intelligence agencies) on the basis of ethnic and religious inclusiveness, with members of Iraq's various communities distributed across the hierarchies of those forces as well as within the governorates; 


    3.. ensuring that the ministers of defence and interior, as well as commanders and senior officers at both the national and local level are appointed on the basis of professional competence, non-sectarian outlook and personal integrity; and 


    4.. establishing an independent commission, accountable to the council of deputies, to oversee the militias' dismantlement and the creation of fully integrated security forces.


  e.. In implementing de-Baathification, judge former Baath party members on the basis of crimes committed, not political beliefs or religious convictions, and establish an independent commission, accountable to the council of deputies, to oversee fair and non-partisan implementation. Both former Baathis and non-Baathis suspected of human rights crimes or corruption should be held accountable before independent courts.

  To the Government of the United States: 


  f.. Press its Iraqi allies to constitute a government of national unity and, in particular, seek to prevent the defence and interior ministries from being awarded to the same party or to strongly sectarian or otherwise polarising individuals.


  g.. Encourage meaningful amendments to the constitution to produce an inclusive document that protects the fundamental interests of all principal communities, as in recommendation 3 above.


  h.. Assist in building up security forces that are not only adequately trained and equipped, but also inclusive and non-sectarian. 


  i.. 


  j.. Engage Iraq's neighbours, including Iran, in helping solve the crisis by taking the measures described in recommendation 11 below, and actively promote the reconciliation conference agreed to in Cairo in November 2005, encouraging representatives of all Iraqi parties and communities, as well as of governments in the region, to attend.

  To Donors:


  k.. Allocate funding to ministries and government projects, as well as civil society initiatives, strictly according to their compliance with principles of inclusiveness, transparency and competence.

  To States Neighbouring Iraq:


  l.. Help stabilise Iraq by:


    1.. expressing or reiterating their strategic interest in Iraq's territorial integrity;


    2.. encouraging the winners of the December 2005 elections to form a government of national unity and accede to demands to modify the constitution (as outlined in recommendation 3 above); 


    3.. strengthening efforts to prevent funds and insurgents from crossing their borders into Iraq; and 


    4.. promoting, and sending representatives to, the planned reconciliation conference in Baghdad.

Amman/Baghdad/Brussels, 27 February 2006

FULL REPORT:-

Middle East Report N°52 27 February 2006

THE NEXT IRAQI WAR? SECTARIANISM AND CIVIL CONFLICT

  a.. INTRODUCTION: ESCALATING SECTARIAN VIOLENCE
  Following the advent of its first elected government in April 2005, Iraq has witnessed an alarming descent into sectarian discourse and violence. Centred on the principal divide between Sunnis and Shiites, this development has prompted increasingly inflammatory rhetoric, indiscriminate detention, torture and killings on the basis of religious belief, attacks on mosques and families' induced departures from towns and neighbourhoods based on their religious identity.

  While there has been tension, and some violence, between ethnic groups (for example, Arabs and Kurds) or among Shiite militias (such as the Badr Organisation and the Mahdi Army) that could similarly contribute to Iraq's disintegration, this report focuses on the most significant centrifugal forces that are tearing the country apart. These forces, while religious in inspiration and identification, are profoundly political in origin and character. Their main representatives are the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) - and its military arm the Badr Organisation (formerly the Badr Corps, al-Faylaq al-Badr) - that formally came to power as part of a Shiite-Kurdish coalition after the January 2005 elections, and insurgent groups seeking to jumpstart civil war and foment chaos by targeting Shiite populations, especially but not exclusively the insurgent outfits known as Tandhim al-Qa'ida fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (al-Qaeda's Organisation in Mesopotamia) and Jaysh Ansar al-Sunna (Partisans of the Sunna Army). 

  The event marking the onset of their increasingly ruthless fight was the car bombing of a crowd exiting the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf on 29 August 2003 that killed more than 85 worshipers, including Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, SCIRI's powerful and charismatic leader, the attackers' target. Since then, an unremitting battle between insurgents and government forces (backed by U.S. troops) has spawned a much more pernicious sectarian conflict - Sunni on Shiite, Shiite on Sunni - in which the most radical elements on each side are setting the agenda. Thus, attacks on Shiite crowds by suicide bombers allegedly acting on orders of certain insurgent commanders are countered by sweeps through predominantly Sunni towns and neighbourhoods by men dressed in police uniforms accused of belonging to commando units of the ministry of interior (controlled, since April 2005, by SCIRI and its Badr Organisation).

  Sectarian passions are inflamed on both sides with each gruesome suicide attack or discovery of mutilated bodies, an almost daily occurrence. Most frequent have been the egregious bombings of crowds of worshipers, mourners in funeral processions, shoppers or job-seekers queuing to join the police in predominantly Shiite towns and neighbourhoods. Most attacks take place in Baghdad and towns ringing the capital, a majority of which have mixed populations, or on roads leading from Baghdad to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, which traverse a string of Sunni-inhabited towns - Latifiya, Mahmoudiya, Iskanderiya, Yusefiya, Musayyeb - in the so-called Triangle of Death. In the Shiites' litany of outrages, attacks targeting religious leaders (Baqr al-Hakim) or festivals (Arba'in, 2004) stand out. 

  Mass casualties occur even when no political target is involved but the attackers seek to spread fear, anger and discord (fitna), for example the suicide bombings in Hilla on 28 February 2005 (some 125 dead) and in a bus leaving a Baghdad station for the southern (Shiite) town of Naseriya on 8 December 2005 (at least 32 dead). There also have been brazen armed attacks in broad daylight against Shiites walking in the street, passing a checkpoint while driving or simply being in their own homes or places of work. One particularly notorious incident, in late September 2005, involved the execution-style killing of five (Shiite) teachers and their driver in Muwelha, a (Sunni) suburb of Iskanderiya, by armed men dressed as police officers. 

  So pervasive has become the fear of attacks that crowds respond to the merest suspicion of one having taken place or about to occur. Thus the rumour that a suicide bomber was about to blow himself up in the midst of a procession on the occasion of a Shiite religious festival on 31 August 2005, triggered a mass stampede on a bridge in Baghdad's (Shiite) Kadhemiya neighbourhood in which hundreds of worshippers - men, women and children - were either trampled underfoot or drowned in the Tigris. Coming on the heels of a mortar barrage in the vicinity of the crowd earlier that morning that reportedly killed as many as seven, the alarm was sufficient to cause mass death in the absence of any physical attack.

  For a year and a half, from August 2003 until February 2005, such attacks met with barely a response from most Shiites, except deepening anger and calls for revenge. The only ones accused of meting out revenge from the outset were members of the Badr Organisation, allegedly responsible for the assassination of former regime officials and suspected Baath party members, in addition to suspected insurgents, but for a long time these actions did not reach critical mass. The Shiite religious leadership repeatedly and insistently called on the masses to exercise restraint and on survivors to refrain from avenging themselves for the deaths of their close relatives. This, and the expectation that they, the Shiites, were about to come to power through the U.S.-engineered transition, mollified the community and left the attacks both one-sided and dramatically unsuccessful: if the aim was to jumpstart sectarian war, the provocations failed to yield the intended response. 

  However, once the Shiite parties, brought together in the United Iraqi Alliance, won a simple majority of votes in the January 2005 elections and, in alliance with the Kurdish list, gained power three months later, the picture changed dramatically, especially after SCIRI took over the Interior Ministry, allowing the Badr Corps to infiltrate its police and commando units. Soon, Iraqis witnessed a steep rise in killings of Sunnis that could not be explained by the fight against insurgents alone. Carried out during curfew hours in the dead of night and reportedly involving armed men dressed in police or military uniforms arriving in cars bearing state emblems, raids in predominantly Sunni towns or neighbourhoods appeared to cast a wide net. Those seized later turned up in detention centres or, with a disturbing frequency, in the morgue after having been found - hands tied behind their backs, blindfolded, teeth broken, shot - in a ditch or river. These raids prompted suspicions that they were carried out by Badr members operating under government identity and targeted the Sunni community rather than any particular insurgent group or criminal gang.

  In a well-publicised incident, men dressed in green camouflage uniforms identified by witnesses as members of the Volcano Brigade detained some 30 (Sunni Arab) men in Baghdad's (mostly Shiite) Hurriya neighbourhood one night in August 2005 around 1 a.m. Several days later, their mutilated corpses were found in a dry riverbed near the Iranian border. Surviving relatives denied they had had any role in the insurgency and accused government forces of targeting Sunni tribes (in this case the Dulaim and Mashahada) as revenge for their past support of Saddam Hussein's regime. 

  In late October, militia men of the Mahdi Army raided the (Sunni) village of Madayna in Diyala governorate in an apparent attempt to free hostages captured by local highway robbers. Meeting resistance and suffering casualties, they reportedly returned with commando units of the interior ministry and took reprisals, burning down homes and executing a number of villagers. "This is the beginning of a sectarian war", Diyala's deputy governor, a member of the (Sunni) Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), declared afterwards. Disturbing evidence has also emerged of a methodical effort to assassinate senior officers of the ousted regime's military, including air force pilots who fought in the war against Iran. These killings have been attributed to Iranian-sponsored Shiite parties that, with the tables turned, are bent on settling scores.

  As such attacks accumulate, Iraqis' perceptions are increasingly shaped along sectarian lines, with Sunnis and Shiites seen not only as victims but as the intended targets. Public and political discourse has followed apace, frequently taking on an unabashedly sectarian colouration, even as sectarianism is denounced. Amidst the many political slogans painted on Baghdad buildings, for example, one can find sectarian specimens, such as: "Long live the Sunni area!" Political leaders often resort to code, understood by all, to injure members of the opposite community. Moreover, in their speeches and sermons some politicians and religious leaders have highlighted the fate and good deeds of members of their own community while excoriating the opposite community's political leadership for having either perpetrated or done too little to prevent perceived sectarian outrages. Thus, some Shiite leaders immediately cast the above-mentioned Kadhemiya bridge disaster in sectarian terms, accusing Sunnis of having precipitated, if not caused, the deaths of hundreds of Shiite worshipers.

  Sheikh Jalal-al-Din al-Saghir, for example, a Shiite cleric who belongs to SCIRI, bewailed the "beloved" victims' fate in a sermon on the first Friday following the event; berated the kind of "jihad" that would rocket men, women and children congregating for religious purposes; contended that the ministry of defence (headed by Saadoun al-Dulame, a Sunni) rather than the ministry of interior (under Bayan Jaber, a SCIRI colleague) had been responsible for security in the neighbourhood and queried why Dulame had permitted his ministry to be "penetrated by Wahhabi and criminal elements"; demanded to know why the ministry of health (whose minister, Abd-al-Mutaleb Ali, is a follower of Muqtada Sadr and thus a rival to SCIRI) had been unprepared to handle the disaster with only three ambulances on the scene; thanked the (Shiite) members of the Iraqi National Guard on duty in Kadhemiya on the day of the disaster; and expressed "surprise" at the fact that some officials and clergy, "especially the clerics with olive-green turbans", failed to condemn "this criminal act".

  By contrast, at a Sunni mosque, Sheikh Ahmad Abd-al-Ghafour al-Samarraie, a member of the (Sunni) Muslim Scholars Association (MSA), dwelled only briefly on the Kadhemiya incident in his Friday sermon, to observe that (Sunni) residents of neighbouring Adhemiya had risked their lives to save some of the (Shiite) victims from drowning. He then launched into a tirade against those who sought to pin responsibility for the incident on "members of a certain sect" (the Sunnis), placing the onus on (Shiite) security forces instead:

  Why does the world talk of masked terrorism and not of organised terrorism? Why does the world talk of terrorists and ignores state terrorism? There are gangs that exploit state instruments and kill and execute people with government-issued weapons driving government cars, with the government either unaware or choosing to overlook this. 

  Sheikh Abd-al-Salam al-Qubaysi, speaking next, then homed in on what he saw as the real problem: "Who would have believed that SCIRI and Daawa would do such things - take people from their homes, kill them and set fire to them? There are entities now in Iraq pushing toward sectarian war because they realise that their influence is shrinking in the Iraqi and Shiite street and now they want to win the Shiite street's compassion by these actions".

  The Iraqi media magnify the problem by their daily portrayal of violence, with especially politically-affiliated stations and papers ladling out a partisan broth that polarises the Sunni and Shiite communities. The abovementioned Hurriya killings, for example, received prime billing (with a gruesome picture of one victim and inflammatory headlines) on the front page of Al-Basa'er, a newspaper associated with the Muslim Scholars Association - its effect, if not its intent, to further inflame sectarian passions. Moreover, satellite TV stations such as al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, both based outside Iraq, are seen as supporting the insurgents' cause through partisan broadcasts betraying a Sunni vantage point. As for the new crop of Iraqi channels, neutral ground has receded to give way to partisan reporting, if not in fact then in predominant perception. A relatively independent channel such as al-Sharqiya is seen as Baathist by many Shiites and watched mostly by Sunnis. Al-Iraqiya, which the Shiite-led government took over from U.S. control, is considered pro-Shiite and indeed threw its support behind the Shiite list in the December 2005 elections.

  On top of this, political parties have established "human rights" departments that churn out a literature of victimisation concerning the groups, or broader community, they profess to represent. The Muslims Scholars Association, for example, uses a standard questionnaire to compile basic data on Sunnis claiming to have suffered abuse at the hands of government agents or militias. It then publishes lists with no more than the victim's name, date and place of the incident and reported (often presumed) perpetrator, with titles such as: "Names of Those Assassinated for Sectarian Reasons" and "Incidents of Sectarian Killings of Sunnis". Organisations like the MSA, the Sunni Waqf, the University Teachers Union (Rabetet-al-Tadrisiyin al-Jamaiyin) and the Iraqi Lawyers Union (Naqabet-al-Muhamin al-Iraqiya) also release abundant documents detailing atrocities. 

  Anecdotal evidence suggests that, prompted by seemingly arbitrary assassinations - understood as sectarian because lacking any obvious alternative motive - hostile rhetoric and spreading fear, growing numbers of Iraqis living in mixed towns or neighbourhoods in which they are a minority are moving to areas where their religious kin predominate, often trading places with members of the other community, who find themselves in the same predicament. In doing so, reported The New York Times in November 2005, these people "are creating increasingly polarized enclaves and redrawing the sectarian map of Iraq, especially in Baghdad and the belt of cities around it". These pre-emptive but nonetheless involuntary departures are all the more tragic in that they polarise and tear apart extended families, given the pervasive phenomenon of Sunni-Shiite inter-marriage. 

  b.. 
  c.. ROOTS OF SECTARIANISM
    1.. Before April 2003
    Like all societies in which adherents to two or more religions, or branches of the same religion, live together, Iraq has not been free of sectarianism (ta'efiya) during its modern history. "It was always there", said a middle-aged Iraqi, speaking of his youth. "Everybody knew what everybody else was. After leaving a Sunni home, the Shiite visitor would wash his mouth. If you, as a Shiite, had a bad dream, you would say this was because you had eaten at a Jew's or a Sunni's house". Sunnis and Shiites readily married each other, usually maintaining their own religious identity (unless one partner was forced by the spouse's more influential family to change it as part of the marriage agreement) but bequeathing the father's to the children. Sectarianism, in other words, was largely social and cultural, endemic but relatively benign. It became virulent only when it was politicised by actors who sought to exploit religious and ethnic identities for political gain, for example as a mobilisation tool with which to acquire a larger following - a phenomenon also observed in other armed conflicts, such as in the former Yugoslavia. 

    Sectarianism was employed as a political instrument at different times during Iraq's modern history but rarely to the extent of triggering significant violence, much less civil war. In the 1920s, the British mandatory authorities did not shrink from using sectarian categories in their attempt to bring order to the countries they and the other victorious powers had forged from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Favouring one sectarian group over another proved an effective divide and rule strategy, including in Iraq. Social factors facilitated this policy. In the 1920s and 1930s, Sunni Arabs dominated the country's political and military institutions, reflecting in part their predominance as landed overlords, whereas the majority of Shiites were landless labourers on the Sunnis' domains, especially in historically Sunni areas. By the end of the monarchy (1958), this situation had started to shift, however, with Shiites present, though still under-represented, in government, inter-marriage becoming acceptable and Shiites (in many cases replacing the Jews who left in 1951) moving into a position of economic dominance, especially in commerce.

    When the Baath party seized power in 1968, its ideology was self-professedly secular. In fact, whatever else can be said of the regime of Saddam Hussein (which gradually shed much of its Baathist ideological baggage), it was an equal-opportunity killer at most times, its principal criterion being Iraqis' loyalty to the regime, not their ethnic or religious background. Although Shiites and Kurds were routinely under-represented in the most senior executive positions, and the very core of Saddam Hussein's security apparatus (for example, his bodyguards and the Special Republican Guards) was drawn from (Sunni Arab) tribesmen, especially members of his own Albu Naser clan, the primary criterion for cooptation was blind loyalty to the president. This, combined with professional proficiency, could lead to impressive careers regardless of ethnic or confessional background. 

    In fact, the consolidation of Saddam Hussein's personal power and the realisation of his personal ambitions came at the expense of segments of the population most readily associated today with the notion of Sunni Arab rule. Right up to its downfall, the regime gave ample proof, by executing numerous Sunni Arab personalities and even members of Saddam Hussein's own tribe and family (for example, his sons-in-law Hussein and Saddam Kamel in 1996), that no specific lineage offered any protection whatsoever to anyone perceived as a threat.

    It was at times of intense national crisis that repression assumed a more sectarian hue. Shiites became the regime's prime target, first during the Iran-Iraq war and then especially in the aftermath of its 1991 defeat in Kuwait, when an uprising spawned in the ranks of the retreating army swiftly assumed Shiite overtones (encouraged by SCIRI/Badr elements pouring across the border from Iran). Even if the principal butcher in the bloody repression that followed, Muhammad Hamza al-Zubeidi, was one of their own, in the Shiites' collective memory the perpetrators were a Sunni Arab-based regime. This goes a long way toward explaining current animosities toward Sunni Arabs and the provisional government's resistance to the notion of inclusiveness during the political transition in 2005. 

    However, if the current outbreak of sectarianism does not flow directly from the sectarian policies of the previous regime, it arguably follows from that regime's very nature. Its violently repressive authoritarianism eradicated old (non-sectarian) social forces and their political representatives - for example the Iraqi Communist Party and the National Democratic Party - and generated new ones, especially religious and tribal forces, as a way of extending the regime's control. "The present sorry state of Iraqi politics", contends the noted Iraqi social scientist Sami Zubaida, "dominated by religious authority and sectarian interests, is not the natural state of Iraqi society without authoritarian discipline. It is the product precisely of that authoritarian regime and the social forces that engendered it, greatly aided by the oil wealth that accrued directly to the regime".

    In sum, the Baath regime's ethnic/sectarian legacy is mixed. The potential for the outbreak of ethnic and sectarian violence certainly existed in Iraq's past, but nothing suggested it would be the inevitable result of the regime's removal. Such a development required the ability of political actors with express ethnic and sectarian agendas to operate in a permissive environment. This is precisely what followed the arrival of U.S. and allied forces. Exile parties, such as SCIRI and Daawa, which thrived on a sectarian identity (as well as the Kurdish parties with their ethnically-based political agenda), eagerly jumped at the opportunity and, in the absence of internal rivals, pressed ahead and transformed Iraq's secular tradition beyond recognition. Iraq's new foreign rulers, furthermore, arguably reinforced ethnic and sectarian identities through their misconceptions and resulting actions, especially by the way they went about establishing the institutions of the new state.

    b.. CPA Policies
    Among the first steps taken by Paul Bremer, the freshly appointed chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), were the orders banning the Baath party and abolishing the security apparatus, including the army. Both measures were seen as essential to the country's stabilisation: the continued presence of key elements of the former regime, so it was feared, could set the stage for the emergence of a fifth column that would subvert and then seize control of the new order. Importantly, the old regime was perceived as based in the Sunni Arab community, a view that meshed with the predominance of opposition parties rooted in the other two principal communities, the Shiites and Kurds. The destruction of these key institutions therefore had a sectarian aura. In the words of a former CPA official:

    Senior CPA advisors and the political leadership in both Washington and Baghdad saw Iraq as an amalgam of three monolithic communities, and as long as you kept the Shiites and Kurds happy, success was guaranteed, because they were not Baathists, formed the majority and essentially had the same ideas as liberal Americans. This simplistic mindset explains most of the mistakes of U.S. policy, including the disbandment of the army and Baath party, which they also saw in sectarian terms. Today we have the sectarian and ethnically-based politics that the U.S. always claimed existed, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    Iraqi perceptions of the army, security forces and Baath party are a good deal more complex, however. To most Iraqi Arabs, Sunni or Shiite, the army was a national institution, one (as Crisis Group wrote previously) "whose origins predated Saddam Hussein's rule, whose identity was distinct from that of his Baathist regime, and which has been intimately linked to the history of the Iraqi nation-state since the 1920s". They would readily agree, however, that the Republican Guard Corps and the Special Republican Guard Corps consisted primarily of Sunni Arabs, especially in the upper ranks, and were, by design, sectarian institutions.

    Kurds and Islamist Shiites view the army quite differently, namely as a selectively repressive institution that, along with the rest of the regime's security apparatus, thwarted their political aspirations. Nationalist Kurds, for example, who suffered greatly from an army-led counter-insurgency campaign in the 1980s (and even earlier eras), hold little sympathy for this "national" institution. Likewise, many Islamist Shiite militants have expressed hostility toward an institution that they, as Crisis Group wrote in 2003, "associate with fierce domestic repression and discrimination in favour of Sunnis".

    The dissolution of the regime's entire security apparatus - army, special forces, intelligence agencies, and ministry of defence, among others - arguably hurt the Sunni Arab community hardest. Even if the army was non-sectarian, its dismissal meant to Sunni Arabs the loss of its principal protector, as well as its guarantee for the future. It is Sunni Arabs who have most explicitly - especially during the constitutional negotiations in 2005 - embraced the notion of Iraqi unity, a quality that, in their view, the army embodied. 

    By encouraging the insurgency, the CPA's decision indirectly contributed to the sectarian rift in another way. The army's humiliating summary disbandment put up to 350,000 men in the street without pay, the promise of a pension or, for senior officers, the prospect of recruitment into the new security organisations. Given the predominance of Shiites in the army's rank and file, the decision led to mass protests throughout Iraq (minus Kurdistan), in Shiite areas no less than in Sunni ones. In the absence of comprehensive research, anecdotal evidence collected over the past two-and-a-half years suggests that many former soldiers and officers joined (and perhaps even gave rise to) the incipient insurgency during the hot summer months of 2003 or, in even greater numbers, resorted to crime as a way of making ends meet. 

    In the resulting chaos and disaffection, the emerging insurgency could blossom and sprout. But, although the insurgency comprised both Sunnis and Shiites at the beginning, over time it assumed a predominantly Sunni (Arab) character because it fed especially on the disaffection of Sunni Arabs who felt disfranchised and marginalised. This community's fears intensified when the regime's removal brought to power parties that based themselves on ethnic and confessional identities and began to pursue similarly based policies, such as the building of new security forces dominated by Shiites and Kurds. 

    The de-Baathification order had a similar impact. The Baath party was one of the regime's principal instruments of control in which, over time, as the regime's composition and character changed, Sunni Arabs came to dominate - though not monopolise - the most senior echelons, while Shiites gravitated toward the rank and file. Its "disestablishment", in CPA terminology, and the removal of "senior party members" from "positions of authority and responsibility in Iraqi society" and those of lower rank from the top three layers of management, in one swoop deprived Iraq of its managerial class, regardless of those managers' character or past conduct. The CPA then set up a de-Baathification Council to supervise this process. It was controlled by Ahmed Chalabi, a former exile who used it to eliminate potential rivals and, in the run-up to the January 2005 elections, to rally (sectarian) support as he gambled on the Shiite card to gain power. Moreover, the Shiite parties that rose to prominence helped "sectarianise" the de-Baathification process by giving Shiite Baath party members within their own community the opportunity to repent. The standard approach toward Sunni Arab members, however, was to exclude them from senior posts in government and the security forces.

    In the eyes of many Sunni Arabs, de-Baathification has become a blunt weapon wielded by the new Shiite-led government to exorcise its demons - these being not the former regime alone, but Sunnis as such. The Shiite parties "claim that the Sunnis are responsible for all of Saddam's mistakes", said Tareq al-Hashemi, secretary general of the Iraqi Islamic Party. "But we are not. We are also his victims. And now they are talking about terrorism, about Baathism, about Wahhabism, but at the end of the day, they mean Sunnis". "De-Baathification is turning out to be de-Sunnification", agreed Nabil Younis, a lecturer at Baghdad University. "This is why Sunnis are afraid". Sunni Arabs further fear that, by enshrining de-Baathification in the new constitution, future Shiite-dominated governments could use it to selectively keep Sunnis out of public sector jobs, offering these to Shiites, who, ironically, were a majority in the Baath and, just as ironically, in many cases had joined simply to secure public sector jobs that otherwise would have been unavailable.

    Before the long-term sectarian impact of these decisions could become clear, the CPA, with the help of the United Nations, established the Interim Governing Council in July 2003, a ruling body whose composition has been at the heart of an ongoing controversy. On the face of it, the council appeared inclusive, comprising representatives of all of Iraq's principal communities - Arabs, Kurds and Turkomans, as well as Muslims (both Sunnis and Shiites) and Christians. In reality, it was neither inclusive in a true political sense, nor representative. As many critics have pointed out, it was heavily weighted toward the only existing political parties - those of the former exiles - but in most cases they had little indigenous support; it especially represented Sunni Arabs inadequately, since its Sunni members were former exiles such as Adnan Pachachi and Ghazi al-Yawar, who lacked significant constituencies. Worse, the parties that were favoured - the only parties that existed, as a result of having been raised in exile during a regime that tolerated no domestic politics outside the Baath party - almost invariably had overtly ethnic (the Kurds) or sectarian (the Shiite religious parties) agendas.

    More pointedly, it was, in fact, in the council's purported inclusiveness that the problem lay, since selection was based on supposed representation of Iraq's amalgam of communities. For the first time in the country's history, sectarianism and ethnicity became the formal organising principle of politics. In the rush to give an Iraqi face to the U.S. occupation, the CPA fell to default mode, empowering ethnic and sectarian groups whose presence in any event accorded with - and may have reinforced - its simplistic view of a society consisting, broadly, of Arabs and Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis. "The Americans played a big role in this new sectarianism", said Ismael Zayer, the editor of the daily al-Sabah al-Jedid. "They characterise the Iraqi people by their sect. They will ask you: 'Are you a Sunni or a Shiite?' Why are they asking this question? Now it has become a trend". Thus, just over half of the Interim Governing Council's members were Shiites and about 40 per cent were Sunnis (and one Christian); 68 per cent were Arabs and 24 per cent were Kurds, the remaining 8 per cent reflecting one Assyrian and one Turkoman.

    In Sunni Arab discourse today, the onset of all their ills lies with the appointment of the Interim Governing Council. In the words of Tareq al-Hashemi, the IIP's secretary-general, "All these problems started with Bremer imposing a quota when he set up the Interim Governing Council. He created a segregation between the communities, favouring some religious groups over others". The key winners were Shiite religious parties like SCIRI and Daawa, whose ideology many Sunnis in Iraq associate with the regime in neighbouring Iran. "Bremer's quota", charged Nabil Younis, allowed these parties to grab the power that had long eluded them and to which they felt entitled. "If you ask these people, they will say: 'It was our time to regain power'. They are either Persians or persons who lived in Persia. By contrast, if you speak to [true] Arab Shiites, such as Muqtada Sadr, you will find that they do not see differences between Sunnis and Shiites". As if to confirm this, a politician close to Sadr, Sheikh Fateh Kashaf al-Ghitta, said: 

    The Americans brought with them the exiles. Most of these were Shiite Arabs and Sunni Kurds. Because of this, and because of the regime's rapid collapse, most of the Sunni Arabs felt threatened. The Kurds said: "We were persecuted by the former regime". The Shiites say the same. And when the Interim Governing Council was established on a sectarian basis, the others - the Sunni Arabs - said: "Where are we"?

    During the following months, a growing insurgency with emerging Sunni Arab overtones increasingly destabilised the country, even as the political process, with fits and starts, proceeded. This only reinforced the U.S. notion that the Sunni Arabs were a problem that ought to be isolated and fought rather than included through negotiation and persuasion. "The Americans", contended Wamidh Nadhmi, "found resistance in the Sunni [Arab] areas and said that the Sunnis are the problem. But all Iraqis are against the occupation, except perhaps for the Kurds; the first spark of resistance occurred in [Shiite] Kufa and Najaf". 

    There were no Sunni Arab political leaders who could mediate, only an insurgency that increasingly fed on Sunni Arab disaffection. A heavy-handed counter-insurgency effort created a self-fulfilling prophecy: raids on towns and villages alienated a Sunni Arab community that then started to express growing sympathy with the insurgents. In this environment, the CPA invested its political hopes in the former exiles on the Interim Governing Council, thereby giving the political transition a distinctly Kurdish and religious Shiite colouration. Yet there was nothing inevitable about the Sunni Arabs' political alienation. U.S. forces arguably found less resistance in their areas than elsewhere during the invasion. Senior army officers could have been brought into the new army early on and political and tribal leaders without blood on their hands could have been actively courted. This was not done.

    The Interim Governing Council proved to be a weak and dysfunctional institution that lacked popular legitimacy and support. Yet it was responsible for drafting the interim constitution (the Transitional Administrative Law), which contained the transition timetable. In June 2004 it was replaced by an interim government, also handpicked by the CPA, to which nominal sovereignty was transferred at the end of that month. During this entire period from July 2003-January 2005, the Kurdish and Shiite religious parties were able to use their institutional advantage to entrench themselves and, through ad hoc alliances (the Kurdistan Coalition List and the United Iraqi Alliance) and close adherence to the self-designed timetable, to project themselves as the only significant political actors in the January 2005 elections.

    c.. Constitution-Making
  Rather than keeping latent ethnic and sectarian tendencies in check in its reconstruction efforts, the CPA and its Iraqi allies exacerbated and hardened them, so much so that by the first general elections in January 2005, a perception had taken shape of sharply delineated and roughly homogeneous communities - Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and sundry minorities - with which Iraqis had begun to identify almost despite themselves. The structure of the elections - a system based on proportional representation (with Iraq treated as a single electoral district) - reinforced the assertion of communal identities. At this point, discourse began to revolve around the size of the expected Shiite and Kurdish victory and the electoral and political consequences of the announced Sunni Arab boycott.

  It was because of this boycott which was called by the community's political and religious leaders - along with insecurity in predominantly Sunni Arab areas - that the Sunni Arab population by and large stayed away from the polls, a decision they soon came to regret bitterly, as it led to their near-total exclusion from building and governing the new Iraq. If the appointment of the Interim Governing Council marked the onset of institution-building by ethno-sectarian logic, the January 2005 elections, by their sectarian outcome, gave it popular legitimacy - with "popular" also defined in sectarian terms. The result was the establishment of a Shiite-Kurdish government that promptly intensified a campaign against the insurgency, a dirty war fought by units operating with evident impunity in which distinctions between fighters, political opponents, sympathisers and neutral bystanders blurred dangerously.

  This combination of Sunni self-removal and Shiite victory, said Wamidh Nadhmi, spawned the sectarian tensions the country has witnessed ever since. After all, in sectarian terms the Shiite ascendancy marked a reversal of historic magnitude that instilled in Sunni Arabs a fear of revenge for decades, if not centuries, of discrimination, repression and a litany of other injustices, both real and imagined. The growing conflation of the insurgency with the Sunni Arab community and the indiscriminate sweeps of predominantly Sunni Arab towns and neighbourhoods that became the hallmark of forces operating under the SCIRI-controlled Interior Ministry subsequently vindicated their belief that the tide of history had decisively turned against them - with painful consequences. "Many bad things have happened since Ibrahim Jaafari became prime minister", said Nabil Younis. "The problems have increased by 200 per cent".

  In two previous reports Crisis Group has analysed how the constitutional process set in motion by the January 2005 elections went awry. Whatever factors contributed to this, it must be understood additionally that this process had a significant sectarian dimension, in both its failure to be inclusive and its focus on a particular brand of federalism as the solution to Iraq's past woes. Largely absent from the Transitional National Assembly, and therefore from the constitutional committee, Sunni Arabs were unable at first to participate in the drafting of this foundational document and thereby secure their community's interests. Vigorous diplomatic efforts led by the U.S. brought fifteen unelected Sunni Arab politicians into the drafting process in July. But a month later, when negotiations moved from the committee to the political leaderships of the key Kurdish and Shiite parties, they were marginalised again.

  In the end, Sunni Arab leaders rejected the product of these negotiations, which in their view was a "sectarian text" that reflected a Kurdish-Shiite consensus against them but also, more broadly, against Iraq's national interest - against Iraq itself. The new constitution, they argued with ample justification, prescribed a form of federalism that would facilitate the dissolution of the state, through not only Kurdish secession but also the possible creation of a Shiite super-region in nine southern governorates that would leave the Sunni Arab community landlocked and without oil. Their appeals to Arab nationalism and Iraqi unity, however, were seen by other Iraqis as a desperate bid to preserve some of their power and privileges, if not to lay the groundwork for a future return to power.

  The constitution's profoundly sectarian nature was emphasised by its endorsement by Kurds and Shiites and its massive rejection by Sunni Arabs in the 15 October 2005 referendum. There is no doubt that some Iraqis may have crossed ethnic and sectarian lines, but by and large they did what they had also done in the January elections, which was to vote for parties that traded on their ethnic or confessional identities. The constitution passed by a hair, with Sunni Arabs failing to defeat it in more than two governorates - claiming fraud in the third, swing governorate of Ninewa (Mosul). 

  Rather than dampening sectarian tensions by forging national consensus, the referendum, and the constitution it endorsed, gave new impetus to the centrifugal forces that have been tearing the country apart. This document, warned Hatem Mukhlis, a secular Sunni Arab politician, in an opinion editorial in The New York Times immediately after the referendum, "is nothing more or less than a time bomb..Rather than unifying Iraqis, this constitution would only increase the rift between our ethnic and religious groups. It could also lead to the Balkanisation of the nation".

  The ineluctable conclusion at the end of this process, as the country prepared for the last general elections of the U.S.-engineered transition in December 2005, was that sectarianism had entrenched itself politically and socially. Sectarian identification, previously a taboo, became de rigueur, with Iraqis seeking to discover - in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways - the ethnic or confessional background of friends, neighbours and visitors. "It used to be very shameful to say: I am from this sect and you are from that sect", lamented Baher Butti, a psychiatrist. "We did not have this feeling between the people". A Kurdish politician, once the target of an assassination attempt by agents of the former regime, concurred: "We never had this even under Saddam..This is very dangerous".

  d.. 
  e.. The new SECTARIANISM
    1.. Zarqawi's Sectarian Agenda
    A principal factor in this descent into sectarian war has been Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian jihadi Salafi who moved his operations to the predominantly Sunni Arab areas of Iraq after the war, having been routed first from Afghanistan in 2001 and then from a corner of Iraqi Kurdistan in March 2003. Inserting himself uneasily into the local population, he traded on their resentment at their new fate to create areas from which he could launch his efforts to defeat the U.S., a goal he apparently felt could best be achieved by fomenting chaos, which, in turn, could best be achieved by driving a wedge between Sunnis and Shiites. Bags of cash reportedly helped. These provided "project support" to insurgents whose own resources depleted over time. Allegedly funded by private sources in the Arab and Muslim world, including from zakat (alms), Zarqawi's group, Tandhim al-Qa'ida fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (al-Qaeda's Organisation in Mesopotamia), could be counted upon to finance the operations of other insurgent groups; in the process he was able to spread his influence from the tribal areas on the border with Syria into the Iraqi urban heartland.

    Ever since attacks killing over 100 Shiite worshippers in Baghdad and Karbala during the Shiite festival of Ashoura in March 2004, a number of operations have taken place, including suicide bombings of Shiite crowds, that generally have interpreted as sectarian and almost invariably attributed to foreign jihadis even as they pinned ultimate responsibility for the lack of security on the U.S. Accurately or not, the attackers were assumed to be operating under orders of, or in coordination with, Zarqawi. He himself, while claiming attacks against members of SCIRI and Badr and other political parties and militias, as well as Iraqi police and those hoping to be recruited into the police - all legitimate targets in his view - has rarely in his public pronouncements, which are conveyed either by audiotape or insurgent websites, admitted to targeting Shiites per se; indeed, he repeatedly has denied it.

    On at least one occasion, though, he has more openly shown his agenda. In an audio statement released on 14 September 2005, as U.S. and Iraqi forces were in the midst of an offensive against insurgents in Tel Afar, a town in Ninewa governorate, Zarqawi railed against the attackers, whom he accused of having declared "a comprehensive war against the Sunni people" and announced in turn "a comprehensive war against the Rawafidh all over Iraq, wherever and whenever they are found". Zarqawi's use of the term Rawafidh is seen by some as an attempt to create the ideological justification for the killing of Shiites. Regardless of the theological subtleties inherent in the term - literally "those who reject" (the Caliphates of Abu Bakr and Omar after the Prophet Muhammad's death) - it is understood, both in Iraq and abroad, to mean the Twelver Shiites, who hold that Ali was the Prophet's legitimate successor. Twelver Shiites form the vast majority of Shiites in Iraq (as well as in Iran and Pakistan). 

    "Everybody knows that when Zarqawi talks about killing the Rawafidh he is talking about killing the Shiites. He is trying to create discord (fitna)", a Sunni Iraqi academic told Crisis Group. By using this term, he and others say, Zarqawi is seeking to deflect criticism from his many detractors, both among Iraqi insurgents and from within his own jihadi community. Zarqawi's followers appear to have little doubt as to his meaning. "He is calling for the killing of Shiites to trigger civil war", one told Crisis Group. "A civil war will give him a broader base, freedom of movement and more recruits". 

    In many more recordings and written texts, Zarqawi has repeatedly denounced Rawafidh, as well as their political organisations. His discourse, even though it stops short of advocating physical violence against Shiites, is interpreted by many Iraqis as proof of authorship of the anti-Shiite suicide bombings that have taken place, none of which Zarqawi has individually claimed. Many Iraqis, including some Sunnis, dismiss the notion that anyone other than Zarqawi or kindred jihadis is behind these attacks, and especially at the accusation, proffered by insurgents and some Sunni Arabs, that the Badr Corps, acting as an agent provocateur, is responsible. "[Zarqawi's group's] central policy is to kill Shiites to trigger off a sectarian war", Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, told Crisis Group. Zarqawi, said Wamidh Nadhmi, "started operations against Shiites from a Wahhabist ideology that is inspired by the ideas of Ibn Taymiya, which are alien to Iraqi culture". 

    Some non-Iraqi jihadi ideologues have decried Zarqawi's sectarian bent, underlining that his outlook and methods do not enjoy full-hearted support in the international jihadi community. One person in particular seems to have taken it upon himself to be Zarqawi's critic, namely his former mentor and fellow prison inmate Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi. During an interview on Al-Jazeera TV in early July 2005, while briefly out of (a Jordanian) jail, Maqdisi criticised Zarqawi's methods. Soon Zarqawi responded with a circular in which he combined praise for his former mentor's learning with a pointed reminder that he does not have a monopoly on knowledge. Zarqawi specifically noted that with respect to "martyrdom operations", he was basing himself on a cleric who, unlike Maqdisi, found them permissible. He then noted that he had never targeted "sects that are far removed from Islam", such as "Sabeans, Yazidis who worship the devil, Chaldeans and Assyrians", because they did not fight "alongside the Crusaders against the Mujahidin", unlike the Rawafidh. Here he came to the core of Maqdisi's charges:

    The Sheikh expressed his reservations about our fighting the Rawafidh and said that the ordinary Rawafidh are like the ordinary Sunnis. To this I say: As for our fighting the Rawafidh.we did not begin the conflict with them, nor did we direct our arrows at them. Rather, it was they who began liquidating the Sunnis, uprooting them and invading their mosques and homes. The crimes of the Badr Corps are evident to all, not to mention their hiding in the uniforms of the police and pagan guards, and most importantly their allegiance to the Crusaders..Moreover, those who are well aware of their condition in Iraq know full well that they are not ordinary people such as you [Maqdisi] intend, for they have become the soldiers of the infidel occupier who spy on the true mujahidin. Did not al-Jaafari, al-Hakim and others come to power through their votes? 

    The implicit conclusion, in other words, was that the Shiites forfeited their civilian immunity by massively voting for the principal Shiite list, the UIA, whose leaders, in government since April 2005, have authorised and sent forces to conduct, alongside the U.S. military, offensives against insurgents or, as Zarqawi sees it, the Sunni community.

    The Zarqawi-Maqdisi debate is a dialogue of the deaf. Maqdisi mixes religious arguments with tactical considerations to question the wisdom of attacking Shiite civilians at this time. Zarqawi's goal, on the other hand, is to create chaos, thereby to gain greater freedom of movement and more recruits. 

    Zarqawi's tactics also have created unease among Sunni Arab politicians who have expressed sympathy for the insurgents in the past, as the attacks cast doubt on their nationalist credentials and narrow their support base. Sunni Arab political organisations, such as the Muslim Scholars Association (MSA), have denounced attacks against Shiite civilians and specifically criticised Zarqawi. For example, in response to Zarqawi's September 2005 audiotape, an MSA spokesman declared: "Zarqawi speaks from the position of revenge. This position by Zarqawi is aimed at provoking sectarian war. If he wants a war, he should fight the occupation forces and not innocents". Some Sunni Arab politicians have drawn a clear distinction between "the resistance" (al-muqawama), which attacks the U.S. occupation and its proxies, and "the terrorists" (al-irhabiyin), who target innocent civilians.

    The position of insurgent groups, including even those that claimed responsibility for attacks that killed civilians, has been more ambiguous. Interestingly, and as shown in a recent Crisis Group report, they do not publicly attack Zarqawi or his group, displaying a surface unity that is all the more remarkable given reports of significant tension among them. Indeed, even as Tandhim al-Qa'ida has made major inroads in recruiting Iraqi Salafis to its cause, there are repeated, albeit unconfirmed, reports of growing rifts between this group and other insurgents over the wisdom of indiscriminately attacking Shiites. 

    According to one Iraqi journalist, for example, three insurgent commanders had explained to him that while at first they had embraced Zarqawi's operations because they targeted U.S. troops, government forces and Shiite militias, they began to have second thoughts when he expanded his target list to include Shiites. This, they purportedly told him, was harmful to the insurgency, because it encouraged squabbling Shiite factions to unify; it gave credibility to the Shiites' political role, which now enjoyed international support; and it would make it difficult to live with the Shiites in the future. For example, the journalist said, an Iraqi jihadi Salafi had told him: "Zarqawi never lived with the Shiites. Like him, I think they are kuffar [unbelievers], but I have been living with them and I want to be able to continue living with them". Just so, said Wamidh Nadhmi, echoing one of the insurgent commanders' points: Zarqawi's attacks against Shiites "brought the Shiites together behind their religious leaders, and this has poisoned the political process".

    For now, and despite these tensions, insurgent groups appear willing to paper over their differences for the sake of a common, immediate cause. It is doubtful they would take serious action against Zarqawi's group before its utility as a lever against Shiite dominance in government has run out. Over the longer term, however, and particularly if and when U.S. forces withdraw, these divisions over tactics and longer term objectives are likely to weigh more heavily. "Who will dissolve [Tandhim al-Qa'ida]"?, asked a politician close to the Sadrist movement. "The Sunni tribes? Iraqi security forces? The Americans? This is a big issue".

    Although there is no empirical proof linking each and every suicide bombing in the midst of a Shiite crowd or in a bus carrying Shiites with Tandhim al-Qa'ida, the dominant perception among Iraqis is that Zarqawi and jihadis like him, be they foreigners or home-grown, are the perpetrators, and that their aim is to target Shiites as Shiites. One (Shiite) Iraqi told Crisis Group:

    The terrorists are targeting the Shiites. This is a sectarian war against the Shiites. Our government lied to us when it promised to protect us Shiites. We were persecuted under Saddam, and we are still being attacked today. The Americans said they came to liberate us, but the situation is getting worse. It is because we are Shiites that we are being attacked and beheaded. They say we are traitors and that we are with the Americans. They forget that they [the Sunnis] had a lot of deals with the British while we were fighting the British [in the 1920s]. Civil war is already happening; it has already started. No one will be capable of stopping this until we get a powerful government, with a president like Saddam, but a Shiite.

    Such perceptions have caused a backlash, which may well have been intended: a violent and largely indiscriminate response from within a certain sector of the Shiite community that has further alienated Sunni Arabs and raised the spectre of Iranian hegemony. 

    b.. SCIRI and Badr Seize Control
    One target that both Zarqawi and Iraqi insurgents agree on is the Shiite militia associated with SCIRI, the Badr Corps (now the Badr Organisation). Since their founding in Iran in 1982, SCIRI/Badr have been viewed by many Iraqis as part of an Iranian effort to bring Iraq under its influence. The Iranian regime allowed these exiles to recruit in the refugee camps and among Iraqi prisoners captured during the Iran-Iraq war. Those who switched their allegiance to SCIRI/Badr were called "Tawwabin" (the Repenting), a term pregnant with historical meaning to Shiites. It denotes those who fought against Imam Hussein in 680 but then expressed regret, turned around and killed those who had murdered the imam. To SCIRI and its Iranian backers, the Tawwabin were Iraqis who had fought against Iran and its imam, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but now, as prisoners of war, had decided to share the fate of their Iranian captors and fight the regime of Saddam Hussein. As Tawwabin, they placed themselves in a position inferior to other Shiites, requiring forgiveness; as such, they could easily be manipulated by SCIRI and Iran, who played on their guilt. "[SCIRI leader] Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim began using the term Tawwabin for these people", recalled an Iraqi who was similarly targeted for recruitment at the time. "He did this to set them above the rest. But the Tawwabin were all Ittilaat [Iranian intelligence] agents and they tortured many other POWs". 

    After the collapse of the Baathist regime in April 2003, SCIRI followers and Badr fighters hurried back to the newly liberated land. What they lacked in popularity they made up in resources, military organisation and patronage. Ayatollah Hakim's brother, Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim, Badr Corps commander during his exile in Iran, represented SCIRI on the Interim Governing Council established in July 2003. By the time of the January 2005 elections, SCIRI and Badr were well ensconced in the political transition, effectively manoeuvring to obtain the number one spot on the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) list. When that list won the elections and, with the Kurdish list, proceeded to create the interim government, SCIRI leaders, taking advantage of the security and administrative vacuum that was the CPA's legacy, assumed senior positions.

    The most powerful among them was probably Bayan Jaber Solagh, a Shiite Turkoman who served as SCIRI's representative in Damascus in the 1990s and now was given the post of interior minister. Along with the commander of the Badr Corps, Hadi "Abu Hassan" al-Amiry, a leader of the Tawwabin, and Abu Karim al-Wandi, Badr's head of intelligence, he set out to reshape dramatically the 110,000-strong police and paramilitary forces established by his predecessor, Faleh al-Naqib, the interior minister in the 2004 Allawi government. Their aim was to crush the insurgents, both Saddam's former allies with whom they had old scores to settle, and the Salafis whose political outlook and dim view of Shiites were anathemas. 

    Solagh's reign from the end of April 2005 until today has been marked by accusations of "death squads" operating in predominantly Sunni towns and neighbourhoods and the discovery of secret prisons holding alleged Sunni insurgents, many of whom had been subjected to torture. The rise of crack commando units deployed to fight the insurgency has been particularly notable. These units - the Wolf (Liwaa al-Dheeb), Volcano (Liwaa al-Burkan), Hawk (Liwaa al-Saqr), and Two Rivers Brigades (Liwaa al-Rafidain) - are reported to circulate in unmarked or police cars during night curfew, raiding homes and rounding up suspects who are detained in their separately-run prisons. They gained notoriety for abusive behaviour from the time they were created in 2004, but under the new SCIRI-led dispensation they were infiltrated and commandeered by Badr fighters, who gave their composition and operations a distinctly sectarian edge. 

    A resident of the Hurriya neighbourhood in Baghdad claimed that Iraqi forces wearing green camouflage uniforms and carrying pistols raided his family's house one day in August 2005, at one o'clock in the morning. "They came in cars that had 'Volcano Brigades' written on the side. That was the first time we had seen those". Guided by a civilian wearing a mask who pointed out men to be seized, the forces went through his and adjacent houses, eventually leaving with some 30 young men, all of whom later turned up dead. "The Shiites say that during Saddam's time they suffered and had no power. So now they are trying to get their revenge. We want the raids on Sunnis to be stopped. They are only attacking the Sunnis". 

    In some Baghdad neighbourhoods and villages surrounding the capital, roaming checkpoints manned by either Badr fighters (operating as Badr or as interior ministry units) or insurgents of the (Sunni) Islamic Army check the identity of passers-by to determine (usually from the name) whether they are Sunni or Shiite and detain people at will. 

    One knowledgeable Iraqi attributed the sweeps' indiscriminate nature to poor intelligence. Particularly vulnerable, he said, are Sunnis who go to the mosque for the first of their five daily prayers before dawn:

    Devotion is often interpreted, wrongly, as affinity with insurgents. One of my friends, an elderly man, used to go to the mosque early in the morning as a way to socialise. Then he and his two sons were arrested, and one of them, called Omar, was beaten in front of his family simply because he was called Omar [a name from Islamic history with strongly Sunni connotations]. After two months they were released; they told us they had not even been interrogated. Now the imams have started calling on worshippers not to come to the early-morning prayers any more. 

    Other Iraqis are less charitable in their assessment of the motive for the sweeps, accusing Badr and, behind that organisation Iran, of fighting a dirty war against Sunnis to take revenge for years of brutal repression under the former regime. These killings, said Tareq al-Hashimi, leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, are part of "a strategic Iranian plan" to push the Sunnis out of Iraq.

    The Wolf Brigade is a commando unit that has acquired particular notoriety. Reportedly armed and financed by the U.S., it was established during the Allawi government by Adnan Thabet, an army general who had been imprisoned by the previous regime. According to an Iraqi familiar with the brigade's history, the Mosul branch was placed under the command of Gen. Khaled Abu al-Walid al-Obeidi, a secular Shiite, while Col. Muhammad al-Azawi, a secular Sunni, commanded the branch in Baghdad. After SCIRI took over the interior ministry in May 2005, Azawi was removed for alleged incompetence (he fled the country) and Obeidi promoted and put in charge of the entire operation. Badr fighters penetrated it, and it then fell into Sunni and Shiite parts, each of which is reported to target members of the opposite community. "It all had a sectarian whiff about it", the Iraqi said. "The interior ministry is actively involved in sectarian warfare. Civil war has already started". 

    Interior Minister Bayan Jaber has denied that commando units under his ministry have been running secret detention facilities or operating as death squads, claiming that killings were carried out by men driving stolen police cars and wearing police uniforms purchased at local markets. Solagh's explanation fails to address the question of how these supposedly fake police officers are routinely able to operate during curfews policed by forces under his ministry. As one Sunni Arab leader, Tareq al-Hashimi, put it:

    There are orders to shoot anyone found violating the curfew. But these killers are driving around during curfew hours, with transportation, with convoys, with official cars, using walkie-talkies, wearing police uniforms, using the same official guns [as the police]. When I met with the interior minister yesterday I asked him about [the aforementioned] Hurriya case. He replied to me, "Please accept my apologies, but we were not involved in that incident". So I told him: "You are the minister of the interior. If your men are not involved, you should find out who is behind it. Otherwise, you should resign".

    Persistent reports of death squads operating out of the Interior Ministry have prompted raids on two ministry-run detention facilities by U.S. forces late in 2005, investigations into charges that Interior and Justice Ministry employees had committed torture in those facilities, and an investigation into a specific allegation concerning a death squad of 22 men wearing police uniforms who were about to kill a Sunni Arab man.

    If the problem of sectarianism became particularly pronounced at the interior ministry after SCIRI commandeered it to advance its agenda, other ministries and institutions have not stayed free of it either. This is not to say that the sectarian logic began to dictate the staffing and work of new ministries. Most became party fiefdoms, first and foremost. But to the extent that these parties are religious parties sounding sectarian themes, the ministries and other government institutions were affected as well. The health and transportation ministries, for example, became the domain of the Sadrist movement after the 2005 elections, witnessing a make-over in their senior ranks that was first of all sectarian (Sunnis out) and then political in character (top positions reserved for Sadrists and only then consideration for applicants from SCIRI and Daawa), enforced by a Sadrist cleric. The defence ministry saw the appointment of a Sunni Arab as minister (Saadoun Dulame) but has otherwise been dominated by Kurdish and Shiite parties. 

    One particularly sensitive institution is also threatening to fall victim to sectarian tendencies. The rebuilding of the army, called the Iraqi National Guard (ING) during its embryonic stage under the 2004 Allawi government, has been pursued professedly on the basis of inclusiveness, but de facto this 80,000 strong force has favoured officers who, in the absence of a unified state, are loyal to their political leaders. They predominantly have come from the Kurdish peshmerga forces and SCIRI's Badr Corps, or are Kurdish and Shiite officers from the disbanded army. Better disciplined and trained, they have tended to be concentrated in ethnically or confessionally homogeneous units. "If you go to Army headquarters", said a critic, "you will find one section for the Kurds, a second for the Shiites and a third for Sunni Arabs". In the December 2005 elections 45 per cent of votes cast by members of the security forces (as well as hospital patients and prison inmates) were for the Kurdish list, against 30 per cent for the Shiite list and only 7 per cent for the three Sunni Arab lists - figures that are disproportionate to the size of these communities and were inconsistent with overall results. In a close-up view of the new army's First Brigade of the Sixth Division that is deployed in counter-insurgency operations, a U.S. journalist found that officers:

    increasingly.look and operate less like an Iraqi national army unit and more like a Shiite militia..[Military commanders] said they worry that a mostly Shiite military unit will follow religious clerics before national leaders, risking a breakdown in the army along sectarian lines..Instead of rising above the ethnic tension that's tearing their nation apart, the [army's] mostly Shiite troops are preparing for, if not already fighting, a civil war against the minority Sunni population.

    The deployment of predominantly Kurdish or Shiite units in predominantly Sunni Arab areas for counter-insurgency purposes has heightened ethnic and sectarian tensions, even where these units have registered successes. This was the case, for example, in Falluja and Mosul in 2004 and in Tel Afar in September 2004 and September 2005 (see below). In the run-up to the December 2005 elections in Ramadi, community leaders called on the visiting defence minister to replace the Seventh Army Division stationed there with a new unit based on local officers and troops; the reason: most of the Seventh Division's soldiers were Shiites, who, among other practices, used the election campaign to announce loudly their support for the Shiite coalition list (555, the UIA). The army's mainly Shiite forces deployed in Falluja have been criticised for brutalities and sectarian provocations.

    The case of Tel Afar presents a microcosm of what can go wrong when non-integrated units with ethnic or sectarian agendas are sent to suppress insurgent activity. It is a town west of Mosul in Ninewa governorate on the road to the Syrian border, an area rich in oil. Almost entirely Turkoman in population, with a slight preponderance of Sunni Muslims, the town is heavily rooted in its tribal system and not known for ethnic or sectarian divisions. According to witnesses, shortly after the fall of the regime, foreign fighters reportedly arriving from Syria established a base in Tel Afar, began distributing Salafi literature to young Sunnis and started threatening, and then attacking, individuals working with the occupation forces and administration (and later the Iraqi government and forces). Many residents left, especially those who had relatives or businesses in Mosul, Baghdad or elsewhere. In September 2004, U.S. forces and Kurdish fighters carried out a campaign in Tel Afar to dislodge the insurgents, precipitating a humanitarian crisis and outflow of townspeople, and provoking strong criticism from Turkey.

    When the new government was formed in April 2005, Tel Afar's Shiite Turkomans, who were feeling particularly threatened by the insurgents' actions and the radicalisation of local Sunni youths, organised themselves around a former POW in Iran - a Tawwab - as well as a local (Shiite Turkoman) tribal leader, and sought the assistance of U.S. and Iraqi government forces. In response the Iraqi army deployed its (Shiite) Scorpion Brigade (Liwaa al-Aqrab). "The situation rapidly got out of hand", recounted a witness, and battles between government forces and insurgents "turned into a fight between Sunnis and Shiites within the Turkoman community". 

    That was not all. Tel Afar is on the road between Mosul and Sinjar, a largely Kurdish town close to the Syrian border (and the region of Syrian Kurdistan beyond). Sinjar is separated from the rest of Iraqi Kurdistan by the area of Tel Afar and Mosul, which has a mixed population of Turkomans, Arabs, Kurds, Shabak and Assyrians. Since the Baathist regime's collapse, and especially after the formation of the Shiite-Kurdish government in 2005, the Kurdish parties - KDP and PUK - have extended their writ westward across the Tigris river (which bisects the city of Mosul), establishing party offices and peshmerga barracks in Tel Afar and placing checkpoints on roads leading out of town. "This was strongly resented by local Turkomans", a resident told Crisis Group. "The parties failed to gain any local support or even to break through the traditional mistrust and discomfort that the Turkomans felt".

    KDP and PUK offices and barracks soon became targets of armed attacks. At first intra-Kurdish rivalries were blamed, but then the two Kurdish parties, along with their Shiite allies, claimed they were targeted by Sunnis, thus recasting the primary conflict in Tel Afar from an anti-occupation fight to "one in which minority Shiites were being attacked by the majority Sunnis". In so doing, they built on rifts initially created by the insurgents. The battles that ensued were claimed to justify the government's large military offensive in August and September 2005 (codenamed "Operation Restoring Rights"), which in turn exacerbated sectarian and ethnic schisms, in addition to generating a refugee crisis. The deployment of the Iraqi army's Third Division, in particular, was ill received by the town's Sunni population. It is heavily Shiite and Kurdish, with only few Sunni Arabs. In addition, a Kurdish brigade and overwhelmingly Shiite interior ministry troops participated. By the end of December 2005, Tel Afar's Sunnis were complaining bitterly of persecution and ethnic/sectarian cleansing, even as U.S. commanders held up the district as a success story of fighting the insurgency. 

    c.. Religion as the Principal Source of Political Mobilisation
  For a variety of reasons, mosques have become the focal point of political mobilisation. Once the Baathist regime was removed and its institutions disbanded or discredited, no other viable centre of mobilisation survived. For Shiite parties that returned from exile - SCIRI and Daawa in particular - and those that emerged from the shadows inside the country - such as Muqtada Sadr's movement - religious identity was the prime organising principle of politics. They seized upon the mosque, an institution untainted by the past, as their main vehicle for assembly, propagation and recruitment. Indeed, husseiniyat (Shiite mosques) are the embodiments of Shiite past suffering, a theme that resonates powerfully in the community and therefore has great recruitment potential. In the words of Mufid al-Jaziri, minister of culture in the Allawi government: "To attract followers, Shiite politicians draw on the Shiites' history of oppression. They need to increase sectarian feelings" in order to win votes. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the pre-eminent Shiite marjaa (object of emulation), further enhanced mobilisation by strongly urging his followers to participate in the elections, first in January 2005 and again in December.

  If Shiites initiated the move toward mobilisation via religious identity, Sunni Arabs, left leaderless after the regime's removal, followed suit - almost by default. The problem, a follower of Tandhim al-Qa'ida told Crisis Group, is that "in all the world Sunnis tend to follow their government. When their president or leader is a Muslim, they feel they have to follow him", rendering politics redundant. In the immediate post-war vacuum, without a Sunni leader to follow, the turn to the mosque, therefore, was natural for them as well. 

  Sunni and Shiite mosques alike became staging grounds for political marches and demonstrations, and Friday sermons began to be used as channels of political communication. On both sides this encouraged extremism. In the January 2005 elections, Mufid al-Jaziri said, Shiite clerics and politicians used "to terrorise people by saying: 'If you vote for 169 [the Shiite coalition list], you will go to heaven'; or: 'It is haram [forbidden by religion] for you to sleep with your wife if you don't vote for 169; Allah will never forgive you'. And so on. It really was a kind of terror". 

  On the Sunni side, National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie charged, the same people who used to run the local Baath party offices have turned religious, falling back on mosques as their political headquarters. He said:

  When they go to the mosque, they pray and meet for political reasons..The Salafis have a particularly powerful message. If you embrace it and apply it selectively, religion can become a weapon of mass destruction. When used selectively, the Koran, like any other holy book, can become that. 

  In an environment in which extremism is encouraged, the secular middle ground recedes and national politics gives way to sectarian or ethnic agendas. People do not vote for political programs, noted a Shiite politician. "Kurds vote for Kurds, Shiites vote for Shiites, and Sunnis vote for Sunnis. In other words, everyone votes for those they believe will best defend their interests". Even some politicians known for their secular tendencies have draped themselves in religious garb for political cover. A secular Iraqi said:

  The problem of sectarianism increased after the religious Shiites took power [in January 2005]. The problem is that religious groups base their popularity on sectarian differences. Take the example of Ahmed Chalabi: [In the run-up to the January 2005 elections] he changed overnight from a liberal politician to a religious man to obtain the support of the clerics. This is a dangerous political game. 

  Secular politicians unwilling to make this shift are marginalised, also because mosques become centres for fund-raising among worshipers. "Mosques are playing a very negative role", said Ismail Zayer, a newspaper editor, referring to both Sunnis and Shiites. "Public ignorance has been fed in political speeches given in mosques. If there is going to be civil war, the mosques will be the main instruments of that war". 

  f.. 
  g.. ERODING RESTRAINTS
    1.. Weakening of the U.S.-Backed Central State
    Although sectarianism has become significant, other loyalties and affiliations continue to play important roles, including ethnic loyalty, tribalism and nepotism. Additional factors, analysed below, also have acted as powerful brakes on the spread of sectarianism. But these have begun to erode in the face of unremitting outrages against civilians and a political process that has encouraged polarisation over reconciliation.

    In principle, the institution most capable of preventing communal identities from taking precedence over national ones is the central state but in Iraq it was gutted in the wake of the war. During the period of direct occupation (April 2003 to June 2004) the U.S. and its allies had insufficient time, and arguably interest, to establish inclusive state institutions, with appointment criteria valuing professional qualifications over allegiance to political leaders. Today's ruling parties - most of whom suffered tremendously during the Baathist regime's long reign and blame this on an overly powerful central state - appear intent on ensuring the state remains weak. 

    To that end, Kurdish and Shiite religious parties made sure that the new constitution accorded few powers to central authorities, devolving most authority, as well as access to vital resources, to federal regions and governorates. In establishing a decentralised state, these same parties are also favouring their own regional militias over the national army. With no central apparatus that can rely on its own non-partisan security forces to stand in the way of parties and militias holding ethnic, sectarian and even separatist agendas, the most likely outcome is the gradual erosion or perhaps disintegration of the state. 

    With over 130,000 troops on the ground, the U.S. has been instrumental in keeping militias from attacking each other. It has done so in part unwittingly, as these troops - rather than opposite sectarian groups alone - became targets of armed operations. Moreover, in taking action against not only insurgents (in Falluja and elsewhere) but also the Mahdi Army militia (in Najaf), as well as the Badr Corps (in the uncovering of underground prisons run by interior ministry units), U.S. forces have not taken overt sides in the sectarian conflict. Paradoxically, both Shiite religious parties and Sunni Arab leaders have sought U.S. support even as they publicly decry the occupation. Along with the Kurds, Shiite parties have been the principal beneficiaries of the Baathist regime's removal and of the subsequent political process promoted and protected by U.S. troops. Likewise, Sunni Arabs increasingly count on the U.S. to counter-balance the Shiite parties' growing political weight. U.S. efforts to broker a constitutional compromise in October 2005, coupled with U.S. raids on Badr-run prisons and ongoing attempts to include Sunni Arabs in the new government, all are seen as signs of a new willingness by Washington to curb the Shiite parties' excesses. 

    "Sunnis and Shiites are not yet in an all-out fight", asserted an Iraqi journalist, "because the Americans are still there. A huge part of the insurgency is fuelled by the American presence. If the Americans leave, or announce a timetable for their withdrawal, the insurgents will start an all-out fight with the Shiites. And the Shiites will know they no longer have the Americans to protect them". Left without their protectors, the Shiite parties will have no choice but to face the insurgents directly - with the aim to crush them. "We will take care of the problem" once U.S. forces leave, a member of the Sadr movement predicted confidently.

    A prolonged presence, of course, is not cost-free, as it mobilises anti-American sentiment and support for the insurgency. Indeed, some Iraqis argue that the Bush administration is using the threat of civil war as an excuse to maintain its troops. Having found no weapons of mass destruction and unable to prove a link between the Baathist regime and al-Qaeda, "what alternative argument do the Americans have for not leaving?", asked Wamidh Nadhmi. "This is why they are using the pretext of civil war to stay". Nonetheless, there is every reason to fear that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal, or a withdrawal before establishment of an inclusive government and creation of a largely self-sustaining, non-sectarian military and police force, likely would unleash a full scale civil war. 

    In the end, the question of a troop drawdown is likely to be determined by domestic U.S. concerns. But any assessment of the consequences that can reasonably be expected from such a move should take into account the risk of an all-out civil war 

    b.. Ayatollah Sistani's Waning Influence
    One consequence of growing religiosity has been the tremendous political power gained by clerical leaders. In the case of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the overall impact has been remarkably positive, as he has counselled restraint to Shiites enraged by sectarian violence and called on Shiite clerics to refrain from direct involvement in politics. His power is such that his advice is sought on every aspect of daily existence, from social mores to questions of state. A native Iranian who moved to Iraq in his early twenties to study at the religious seminary in Najaf, Sistani is regarded as the marjaa (source of emulation), the first among equals within the Shiite religious leadership. His philosophy puts him in the quietist branch of Shiite Islam, and throughout the Baath regime Sistani and his mentor, Abd-al-Qasem al-Khoei devoted their time strictly to the conduct of their faith, tolerating a secular leadership regardless of its brutal practices and suppression of religious rituals. The regime's removal catapulted him to a position of political importance he may not have sought but could not easily shirk, given the chaos and uncertainty that befell the country. In the absence of strong political leadership, Sistani was forced to play the part, however reluctantly and always within the parameters of his support of democracy.

    Although he sought to avoid an overtly political role, his support in 2003 for early elections as a way of maximising the legitimacy of the new government effectively favoured the majority Shiite population. Moreover, in late 2004 he instructed his followers to create a single Shiite electoral list, thereby implicitly endorsing it. "I cannot say that Sistani is responsible" for sectarian rifts, said a Sunni Arab politician, "but to the extent that he sponsors a political party, yes, of course, this is problematic". 

    His record as an ecumenical rather than a sectarian leader is, therefore, mixed, though he has done much to burnish his credentials among Sunnis by consistently, repeatedly and explicitly calling on his followers not to respond to attacks with violence. Likewise, following the Kadhemiya bridge disaster in August 2005, Sistani counselled restraint, lest those seeking to sow discord succeed. By barring revenge, Sistani may single-handedly have prevented the outbreak of all-out civil war. For this reason, said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, "we should do everything in our power to protect him. He is our insurance policy against civil war". 

    However, in the face of continuing car bombs and other attacks causing mass casualties, and now also attacks against major Shiite shrines, such as the al-Askariya Mosque in Samarra on 22 February 2006, Sistani's influence seems to be diminishing. Two principal factors account for this. One is that the attacks have become so frequent and massive, and occur during a political process that is so inflamed, that Shiites in general, and Shiite tribal elders in particular, have started pressing hard for the right to retaliate. "Sistani is sleeping", warned a slogan daubed on the wall of a Baghdad secondary school. "Where is the red line"? Much of Sistani's support rests on Shiite tribes in the south; ignoring them could be politically costly. "I hope the criminals will receive the death penalty", said the bereaved father of a victim of a sectarian attack in May 2005, referring to the suspected killers who were arrested shortly afterwards. "If not, I plan to resolve the matter via my tribe. I will have my tribe kill members of theirs if the government doesn't do anything". 

    Another reason is that the government, in the form of interior ministry units and in response to popular demands for revenge, has actively undermined his prohibition by its arbitrary practices against Sunni Arabs under the rubric of counter-insurgency. The notion that Shiite parties were standing up to the insurgents may at least partly explain the success of the Shiite list (the UIA) in the December 2005 elections, despite its poor performance on most other key indicators, such as the provision of basic services, especially a steady power supply, and despite Sistani's much more lukewarm stance toward it compared with the January elections (see below). In the battle for Shiite hearts and minds, it seems that the active combat of ruthless insurgents, irrespective of the means used, is playing far better than the moral imperative to abjure revenge or the tactical consideration not to play into the hands of those who seek to ignite civil war. 

    c.. The Absence of Viable Non-Sectarian Alternatives
    As religion has invaded politics, and parties with sectarian agendas have floated to the top, non-sectarian alternatives are increasingly marginalised. Attempts to organise Iraqis around platforms of national unity have signally failed during the past year. The Iraqi List of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, for example, lost badly in the January 2005 elections but then tried to capitalise on the perceived unpopularity and sectarian tendencies of the Jaafari government. In the run-up to the December elections, Allawi appealed to nationalism and secularism, also projecting himself as a U.S.-supported strongman who could put an end to violence. At a "reconciliation conference" in October, he told those gathered that, "what has been missing until now is a national program, based on democracy and strengthening national unity". "His goal", commented a New York Times reporter, "is to create a political centre that would displace the sectarian agendas of the competing religious parties". There is no doubt that Allawi's pronouncements found an audience among secular Iraqis. A school teacher told Crisis Group: 

    As a Sunni Arab and as a teacher, I felt better under Allawi's government [than Jaafari's]. My salary improved and I saw no sectarian problems during his time in office. Allawi was a fair dictator, which is the opposite of Saddam Hussein, who was an unfair dictator.

    Yet Allawi's list performed even more dismally in the December elections than during the earlier round, collecting only 25 seats against 40 in January. This can be attributed in part to his record in office (accusations of wide-spread corruption), as well as his personal reputation: He is seen by many as an unreconstructed Baathist who had a falling-out with Saddam Hussein and then nurtured a close relationship with the CIA. Distrusted by secular Shiites for his perceived proximity to the Baath, he also lost a good deal of the support he once enjoyed among secular Sunnis by authorising the U.S. assault on Falluja in November 2004.

    However, Allawi's record and reputation already were known in January 2005, so the problem clearly goes beyond his personality and performance. Moreover, attempts by other nationalist-minded Iraqis to construct non-sectarian political movements also have failed to attract significant popular interest, let alone votes. The coalition headed by Jawad al-Khalisi, a non-sectarian Shiite cleric, that included nationalist Sunnis such as Wamidh Nadhmi, did not resonate politically (and did not participate in the elections). Nasseer Chaderchi's National Democratic Party turned out to be an electoral non-entity, despite his, and his late father's, reputation as staunch secular nationalists. A similar fate befell Ahmad Chalabi's list; it collected insufficient votes to earn the former exile and past Washington favourite even a single seat. Some of the secular Sunni Arab parties also garnered minimal results in the December elections. 

    In addition to Jawad Khalisi, other clerics and Islamist-leaning politicians of a decidedly non-sectarian bent have sought to organise political parties, but they too failed to reach critical mass. Furthermore, efforts by Ghassan Atiyyah, a former diplomat with tribal connections, to organise a political party led by tribally-based politicians similarly came to nought. Atiyyah acted on the insight that most tribes comprise both Sunnis and Shiites and as such could rise above sectarian squabbling. "Tribal connections are very important", noted an official of the Iraqi Islamic Party. "When we are part of the same tribe, we are like a piece of fabric that no one can cut, and this is preventing civil war". But the tribes, weak during the early period of Baathist rule but then revived by Saddam Hussein to bolster his regime during the 1990s sanctions decade, clearly have again lost much of their lustre. They continue to play a role on local issues but fail to impress at the national level, in part because they lack unity. 

    Potential exists for a cross-sectarian political movement involving Muqtada Sadr's (Shiite) trend and the (Sunni) Iraqi Consensus Front (which incorporates the Iraqi Islamic Party, as well as Adnan Dulaimi's group). By combining Sunni Islamists and their Shiite counterparts, such a coalition theoretically would be non-sectarian. Muqtada Sadr has had broad appeal among Sunni Arabs because of his strong nationalist, anti-occupation stand, his apparent opposition to federalism, and his open solidarity with Sunnis during times of crisis, for example, the November 2004 U.S. assault on Falluja. Sadr's office also pointedly reminded Iraqis that residents of the predominantly Adhamiya neighbourhood of Baghdad had gone out of their way, during the Kadhemiya bridge disaster in August 2005, to rescue (Shiite) victims from the river, showing that "Sunnis and Shiites are brothers". Yet altercations between Sadrists and Sunni Arabs have occurred, probably because many Sadrists see Sunni Arabs as Baathists and terrorists. The fact that Sadr's movement is so inchoate may have led to armed attacks on Sunni Arabs regardless of Muqtada's official stance.

    Nationalism could trump religious identity if an alliance between the Sadrists and Sunni Arab parties is consummated. But such an alliance would be forged strictly for tactical political purposes in order to counter Sadr's nominal allies but de facto rivals in the UIA, especially SCIRI. That rivalry exists not because Sadr's ideology is not sectarian - it is - but because Sadr has been able to subjugate his sectarian outlook to the firebrand nationalism that has been his trademark and source of political success. His nationalism, in sum, is politically expedient. Whether it can outlast his sectarian inclinations is an open question. 

    What accounts for the poor electoral showing of secular Iraqis, formerly the backbone of society and the political system, aside from possible fraud, is a combination of factors: the country's turn toward religious and ethnic identities in troubled times, the head-start religious parties enjoyed following the Baathist regime's ouster, and the absence of non-sectarian leaders who are credible, effective organisers and with access to significant funding. If there still is a mass of secular Iraqis, unorganised and disaffected with the politics of the new order, it has yet to find a political voice. "Iraqis are not normally extremist or militant in their religious feelings", observed Mufid al-Jaziri, a former member of Allawi's cabinet. "This is the basis for their tolerance vis-à-vis each other". Pointing at the aftermath of the Kadhemiya bridge disaster, Wamidh Nadhmi also said he saw an enduring social cohesion. 

    d.. Changing Posture of Neighbouring States? 
  The behaviour of the neighbouring states ultimately could prove decisive for Iraq's survival as a united entity. If they continue to support the principle of territorial integrity and refrain from destabilising intervention (in whatever form), the sectarian conflict may be contained. If their position shifts, they may precipitate the country's disintegration. 

  So far, it has been in the strategic interest of all these states that Iraq remain intact. Fiddling with one post-Ottoman border raises the spectre of changes to all such borders and may give impetus to ethnic or religious minorities to make common cause with brethren in neighbouring states. A U.S. commitment to protect Iraq's unity was critical in securing Arab support, or at least tolerance, for its 2003 invasion. 

  But, for many, growing Shiite influence is fast becoming the paramount concern. This perception triggered Jordan's King Abdullah II's warning in December 2004 that if Iraq were to be controlled by pro-Iranian parties, the result might be a "crescent" of dominant Shiite movements and governments stretching from Lebanon through Syria, Iran and Iraq to the Gulf (encircling Jordan). Arab fear of spreading Shiite and Iranian influence is deep and, since the first Iraqi elections, has become acute. As one Arab commentator noted, "when Shiite Islamist parties won.it was the first time in more than 800 years that Shiites had taken power in a core Arab country". Following the Jordanian monarch's alarums, Saudi officials took the lead in alerting the public to the U.S. government's dangerous course, especially after the governing parties agreed to a new constitution that threatened to marginalise Sunni Arab concerns and raised the spectre of an Iranian-controlled federal region in oil-rich southern Iraq. In a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington on 23 September 2005, the Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, warned:

  If you allow for this - for a civil war to happen between the Shiites and the Sunnis, Iraq is finished forever. It will be dismembered. It will.cause so many conflicts in the region that it will bring the whole region into turmoil..The Iranians would enter the conflict because of the south, the Turks because of the Kurds, and the Arabs.will definitely be dragged into the conflict.

  Should neighbouring states conclude either that Shiite influence has become a strategic threat or that Iraq's break-up is inevitable, they are likely to take steps that will accelerate the country's disintegration. In other words, increased sectarian polarisation in Iraq will be viewed menacingly by neighbouring states and could draw them into Iraq and hasten its break-up, a development in which, ironically, they have no interest.

  For now, Sunni Arab states are supporting Sunni Arab participation in the political process as a bulwark against either excessive Shiite influence or Iraq's disintegration. Thus, Arab fear of spreading Iranian influence prompted the Arab League's initiative to organise a reconciliation conference, the first instalment of which took place in Cairo in late November 2005. The time may soon come, however, when the limits of Sunni influence will become evident, for example if their efforts to amend the constitution run aground. This may spur further violence between Iraq's principal communities which, in turn, may shape Arab perceptions that centrifugal forces are inexorably tearing the country apart. Riyadh, for example, would view with alarm the emergence of a strongly Iranian-influenced entity in southern Iraq sitting on more than 80 per cent of the country's proven oil resources, as would other Arab states, such as Jordan and the Gulf sheikhdoms, many of which have significant Shiite populations.

  Iran so far clearly is benefiting from events in Iraq where friendly parties have come to power, and the U.S. finds itself embroiled. For now, it seems content to maintain the status quo, including the continued presence of U.S. forces. In Tehran's view, the Americans advance Iranian interests in Iraq by doing the right thing (helping Shiites gain power) - but incompetently so as to incur broad resistance, both peaceful and violent, that ties them down. As a result, Iran has supported Iraq's unity (as long as the country remains comparatively weak) and has made no apparent effort to undermine it. An independent Iraqi said:

  Iran prefers a united Iraq over the uncertainty of a divided one, also because of the problems this would cause among its own Kurdish and Arab populations. It does not want the region to be destabilised. It can have everything it wants if Iraq stays one.

  However, Tehran's calculation may change. Should the nuclear question come to a head and force international intervention of some kind (including sanctions), the regime may want to fight the U.S. where it is most vulnerable, namely in Iraq. In addition, a growing Sunni Arab-based insurgency against an Iranian-backed regime might spin out of control, leading to outright civil war and forcing direct Iranian intervention, which in turn could break Iraq apart. Should Iran determine that the situation has reached a tipping point, it may even encourage Iraq's break-up to secure its own interests in the country's oil-rich south, supervising its proxies in running a largely Shiite entity there. 

  h.. 
  i.. The December 2005 Elections
  The outcome of the December elections underscored the political prominence of religion and ethnicity. The winners were, as at the beginning of the year, the Kurdish parties (that, while secular, have an ethnically-based agenda) and the coalition of SCIRI, Daawa and the Sadrist movement (a recasting of the earlier United Iraqi Alliance) on the Shiite side, now joined on the Sunni Arab side by the Iraqi Consensus Front (ICF), a grouping of three Islamist parties. The non-sectarian "middle", the putative mass of secular Iraqis opposed to and upset by religion's growing role, was nowhere to be found. Its principal flag bearer, Iyad Allawi's National Iraqi List (NIL), performed so poorly (25 seats) as to throw into doubt its effectiveness even as an opposition grouping in the next parliament. "Something changed in the public mood after the elections", recalled an Iraqi journalist. "All my secular friends grew despondent, saying that Iraq will go to hell, now that the majority voted for 555 [the UIA]".

  The results also apparently showed that whatever erosion Ayatollah Sistani may have suffered in his role as a moral authority cautioning restraint in the face of violent anti-Shiite attacks, his ability, and that of the other senior Shiite clerics, to shape an election remained undiminished. Reportedly upset with the performance of the governing Shiite politicians, Sistani did not endorse any particular list. Yet, his recommendation that his followers not spread their ballots was read by most Shiites as an indication that he wanted them to vote for the UIA - which they did in overwhelming numbers (128 seats in the 275-seat assembly). Even secular Shiites appear to have voted for the UIA rather than for the available alternatives, Iyad Allawi and Ahmad Chalabi. In the words of a Western diplomat, they may well have voted "against the hijacking of a historical opportunity for the Shiites". 

  Sunni clerics also exhorted their followers to vote, with evident results. Sunnis who bucked the boycott of the January elections are thought to have voted mostly for the only viable alternative to the UIA at the time, Iyad Allawi. This time they, along with their many compatriots who had stayed away from the earlier poll, appear to have cast ballots for either of the two primary Sunni Arab lists: the religiously-based ICF of Adnan al-Duleimi and Tareq al-Hashimi (44 seats) and Saleh Mutlaq's secular Iraqi Front for National Dialogue (eleven seats). The fact that insurgent groups refrained from attacking polling stations and in some cases actively protected them (and in some locations even encouraged people to vote) contributed to a massive Sunni Arab turnout.

  The conclusion, therefore, must be that this was an identity-driven election in which people voted on the basis of religious or, in the case of the Sunni Kurds and Turkomans, ethnic affinity. According to Adnan Abu Odeh, it was not about democracy but about winners and losers among Iraq's principal communities - Shiites, Kurds and Sunni Arabs. For all three "the main issues are wealth, power and identity, and the crucial question is how to compensate the losers and curb the greedy ambitions of the winners".

  The election results will complicate the planned early review of the constitution. The next government may well be a retread of the Shiite-Kurdish alliance that emerged from the January elections and proved so polarising - and therefore destabilising. Although there is ample talk, and considerable pressure, especially from Washington, to establish a national unity government, numbers speak for themselves. They suggest a UIA-PUK/KDP government, based on their combined 181 seats, with the possible inclusion of Risaliyoun, a smaller Shiite list (two seats), and either the Assyro-Chaldean (Christian) Rafidayn list or Mithal al-Alousi's list (each with one seat), to reach the two-thirds majority (184 seats) required for its confirmation in the council of deputies, and some token Sunni Arabs brought in to try to appease both that community and the U.S. 

  This is certainly the unstated preference of the UIA, which by internal vote in mid-February 2006 chose Ibrahim al-Jaafari to lead the new government. While a different outcome can and should not be excluded, it will take a major U.S. initiative to bring Sunni Arab parties into the government in a meaningful way. President Jalal Talabani has echoed the call for a national unity government but publicly has only insisted on the inclusion of Allawi's list. This is likely to be unsatisfactory to Sunni Arabs, who are fighting hard to have their parties represented in government. Sunni Arab exclusion clearly would deepen the sectarian rift, in particular once constitutional negotiations open. Prior to the elections, a secular politician predicted that if the UIA were to win, "there will be a great sectarian division in the Iraqi population. This may encourage terrorism, and the country may fall apart as a result". Others spoke of an outright "catastrophe". Celebrating its electoral victory, SCIRI's leader, Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim, immediately made clear that the constitution would not be changed and repeated his call for the creation of a Shiite super-region in the south.

  In an effort to make up for the surprising non-appearance of the secular vote, which, in the days leading up to the polls, U.S. experts had confidently predicted would erode the UIA's electoral strength, the Bush administration pressed vigorously for an inclusive government. In an election-day op-ed, Ambassador Khalilzad had forecast a "far more representative" assembly than the previous one and prescribed a "broad-based and effective government", as well as an assembly that "will have the opportunity to amend the constitution, with the goal of broadening support for the document and turning it into a national compact". In the elections' aftermath, Khalilzad noted ruefully: "It looks as if people have preferred to vote for their ethnic or sectarian identities. But for Iraq to succeed there has to be cross-ethnic and cross-sectarian cooperation". In a subsequent editorial in The Wall Street Journal, he insisted that the constitution would "likely need to be amended in the coming year to broaden support", referring especially to a compromise on southern federalism. 

  Then, in a Baghdad press conference on 20 February 2006, Khalilzad reiterated these points and added that the ministers of interior and defence and the chiefs of the national intelligence and national security "have to be people who are non-sectarian, broadly acceptable, non-militia related, [who] will work for all Iraqis". Given that the U.S. is investing "billions of dollars" in building up security forces, he warned, "we are not going to invest the resources of the American people to build forces run by people who are sectarian".

  Khalilzad came to Iraq in August 2005, inheriting existing U.S. policy on the constitution, which was to include Sunni Arabs in the drafting process but to brook no delay in its completion. Pressure exerted by Khalilzad and other senior administration officials led to popular adoption of a document they subsequently insisted should be amended to produce the national compact they had sacrificed earlier for the sake of punctuality. Already in late September, some two weeks before the national referendum, Khalilzad made an about-turn as it became clear that a threatened Sunni Arab boycott might scuttle the political process and fuel the insurgency. In a compromise hammered out over a few days, Sunni Arabs were promised an early review of the constitution if they agreed to participate in the referendum and elections. In the pre-election period, U.S. raids on two interior ministry-run prisons put SCIRI on warning that U.S. tolerance of its practices had reached a limit and sent a signal to Sunni Arabs that they remained in the game and could depend on a measure of U.S. support.

  Khalilzad's - and Washington's - conversion reflects both increased concern about Iranian influence and apprehension that continued Sunni Arab exclusion could lead to the country's break-up. The realisation came late but nonetheless is welcome. Sunni Arab politicians participated in the elections with the express objective of salvaging their community's role via constitutional revisions. Regrettably, these same leaders, and many Sunni Arabs generally, hold a fanciful notion of their own numbers, with claims ranging from 35 per cent to an outright majority, and they expected the elections to confirm this. Instead, results demonstrated what are probably their true numbers: around 20 per cent. It may take a generation or more for this community to adjust to its new status. For now, it will have to rely on its three remaining levers: violence, control over water resources, and, ironically, Washington's relative backing.

  The U.S. faces domestic pressure to draw down its forces ahead of mid-term Congressional elections in November 2006 but has every interest in stabilising Iraq before it starts any significant force reduction. Assuming this still can be done, it will require reassuring all communities that their fundamental interests will be protected.

  j.. 
  k.. Conclusion
Developments in 2005 have unleashed a wave of sectarian attacks and recast crucial questions of identity, allegiance and political governance in sectarian terms. Before 2005, said an Iraqi government official, "sectarianism was a sleeping volcano. Now it has erupted and the question is whether it has gone out of control and how much damage it will do". The critical question today is what can be done to prevent a dirty war being fought by sectarian elements from escalating into all-out civil war? "You don't slip into civil war overnight", asserted Mowaffak al-Rubaie. "You don't go to sleep and the following day there is civil war. Civil war creeps forward insidiously in very subtle ways, and we need to detect its early signs". The key, the national security adviser says, is to secure Baghdad, "because if there is a sectarian war, this is where it will start".

Security solutions, while necessary, will not suffice. "We should sit together and create a new national consensus", said Ismail Zayer, a newspaper editor. "We have to take into account each other's fears and should not exclude anyone. We cannot let the Sunnis feel that they are the losers". Without such a consensus, a civil war stoked by parties with sectarian agendas could trigger the country's dissolution, as Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites step up the swapping of populations and retreat to areas in which they are strongest, thus establishing ethnically and confessionally "pure" zones that, as the central state collapses, in effect would become independent. No such break-up could possibly be peaceful. Indeed, it would come at terrifying human cost given the country's many areas of mixed population, including its three largest cities, and given the Kurds' and Shiites' ambitions to expand their presence into areas in which they are a minority. Such turmoil would also pose serious dangers to Iraq's many smaller minority groups that thus far have lived in relative peace, and, by inviting outside intervention, could well spiral into a broader regional conflict.

Rather than predict the demise of Iraq, urgent steps should be taken to prevent it. It is in the interest of neither Sunnis nor Shiites that Iraq fall apart, and this common perspective can form the basis for an agreement. The principal dispute concerns control over oil and revenues accruing from its sale. Given current uncertainty and the struggle between social and political forces in what essentially is a security vacuum, the oil question has become particularly incendiary and divisive with great risk to the country's unity.

In reopening the constitution, Iraq's principal communities, guided by the U.S., should negotiate a new formula for oil revenue distribution in which the central government, checked by an independent supervisory agency, allocates oil income equitably across the governorates. They also should redefine federalism as it applies to Arab areas as decentralisation to the level of governorates so as to prevent the emergence of multi-governorate regions that either control or lack major gas and oil fields. 

Other steps should be taken to prevent civil war and the break-up that would almost certainly follow. The first key step would be the establishment of a government of national unity that comprises leaders of the principal parties belonging to the full political spectrum, with the so-called sovereignty ministries (defence, interior and foreign affairs), as well as the ministries of finance, planning and oil divided fairly between them. If a Kurd is elected president, as is likely, and the Shiites designate the new prime minister, it would make sense to allocate the parliamentary speakership, and either the defence or interior ministries, to Sunni Arab leaders (primarily those of the Iraqi Consensus Front that gained the most seats). This would help allay Sunni Arab fears of being institutionally disfranchised from the new order and thus would help in preventing civil war. The U.S. should make clear to Shiite and Kurdish leaders that its continued financial and military support will depend on their willingness to agree to reasonable proposals put forth by Sunni Arab leaders to accomplish a broadly-based government and turn the constitution into a genuine national compact. And it should make clear to Sunni Arab leaders that it will have little choice but to continue its support of a new Shiite-Kurdish-led government if their proposals prove unrealistic and their stance intransigent.

The new government should make every effort to meet the most urgent needs, which remain: security, respect for the rule of law, employment and reliable access to basic services such as electricity and fuel. It also should abandon the nefarious habit of staffing ministries with party faithful rather than competent technocrats. And it should make a priority of reining in, and eventually disbanding, militias, focusing instead on building integrated security services, including a national army, in which qualified officers with clean records and of all ethnic or religious backgrounds can play their rightful part. To this end, the government should establish an independent oversight body that reviews the process of building the security forces and reports publicly about the state of progress. Finally, in implementing de-Baathification, the government should ensure that former party members are judged on their past behaviour rather than on political belief or sectarian identity.

The international community should encourage such an approach, promoting non-sectarian mobilisation and institution-building by steering financial aid to non-sectarian initiatives and sanctioning overtly sectarian governance by withholding aid from culpable sectors. It also should condition aid on transparency and accountability, support programs that promote these principles, and thereby discourage corruption and nepotism. Finally, it should support a broad-based conference of national reconciliation, as decided during the November 2005 Cairo conference, by encouraging attendance from representatives of all political currents. At the same time, and however hard it works to prevent this outcome, it would need to start a private discussion about what to do in the event of Iraq's descent into civil war. The discussion, until now, has been taboo for understandable reasons. But the potential is too real, and the consequences of unpreparedness too great, to ignore this scenario. 

For its part, the U.S. should continue to build up Iraqi security forces, making sure that all communities are included and that members of those communities are fairly distributed throughout the hierarchies of the security forces as well as across governorates. And it will need to engage Iraq's neighbours, Iran included, in the search for a stable outcome.

As some see it, the Bush administration's project of nation-building already has failed, an incipient civil war rages, the Kurds have virtually seceded, and the bonds of trust between Sunnis and Shiites have irrevocably been broken. In that view, it would be better to allow all three communities to go their own way. While such pessimism is understandable, it is, as yet, unwarranted. The consequences of such an outcome would be extraordinarily dangerous and destabilising. There is still time for Iraq's leaders to enter into a genuine national compact. For that, however, they will need all the help and the pressure that the international community can muster. 

Amman/Baghdad/Brussels, 27 February 


¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html

To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤