Fierce sectarian violence erupted anew Saturday despite an extraordinary daytime curfew, killing at least 20 people in a car bombing attack on a Shiite holy city, a raid on a Shiite home and a brazen attack on the funeral procession of an Iraqi television journalist in Baghdad.The violence took place even though a daytime curfew emptied the streets of Baghdad and three neighboring provinces for a second day.
Sunni and Shiite political leaders have only been partially effective in defusing tensions:
Shiite and Sunni Arab political leaders have issued public pleas for calm, but each side accused the other of mounting revenge attacks since the bombing of the golden-domed Askariya shrine in Samarra four days ago...Sunni leaders say Shiite militias affiliated with political parties have been allowed to rampage through the streets unchecked by the army and police. The Sunnis, in turn, have hastily organized groups of local men to defend their neighborhoods from attack.
In the face of the violence there is one welcome development:
Nontheless, attacks continue:In one encouraging political development, the main Sunni political bloc, the Iraqi Accordance Front, signaled it could come back to talks on forming a new government if the present government takes steps to ease the sectarian crisis.
The Front issued a statement welcoming the government's promise to rebuild the Shiite shrine in Samarra and Sunni mosques that were damaged in reprisal attacks afterwards.
Despite the conciliatory announcement, on Saturday there were signs the Sunnis were conducting their own offensive. In the morning, gunmen burst into a Shiite house and killed 13 members of one family living near the predominantly Sunni Arab town of Baqubah, north of Baghdad...in Karbala, a Shiite holy city some 50 miles south of Baghdad, a car bomb explosion killed at least five people and injured more than 30. And in Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on the funeral procession for an Al Arabiya television reporter, who was killed along with two colleagues while covering the bombing in Samarra.
The NY Times reports that the violence has only confirmed for the Iraqis the need for private militas, but how those same militias may draw the country into civil war:
The militias pose a double threat to the future of Iraq: they exist both as marauding gangs, as the violence on Wednesday showed, and as sanctioned members of the Iraqi Army and the police. The attacks, mostly by Shiite militiamen, were troubling not only because they resulted in at least 170 deaths across Iraq, but also because they showed how deeply the militias have spread inside government forces. The Iraqi police, commanded by a Shiite political party, stood by as the rampage spread. Now, after watching helplessly as their mosques and homes burned, many Sunni Arabs say they should have the right to form their own militias. For their part, Shiite political leaders and clerics say they are justified in keeping — and even strengthening — their armies, including those units in the government security forces, to prevent insurgent attacks like the one that destroyed the golden dome of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra on Wednesday.
Efforts by American officials to bring about an end to the use of private militias are virtually in vain:
Shiite leaders' denunciations of [U.S. Ambassador Zalmay] Khalilzad, who hinted Monday that Americans might not pay for security forces run by sectarian interests, made it clear that positions had hardened. "We have decided to incorporate militias into the Iraqi security forces, and we are serious about this decision," Hadi al-Amari, the head of the Badr Organization, a thousands-strong Shiite militia, said in a telephone interview. Since the Shiites took control of the Interior Ministry last spring, Badr members have swelled the ranks of the police.
There's little doubt that the Iraqi security forces are largely overrun by members of Shiite militias, and plenty of evidence from the past few days and earlier that Shiite dominated security forces have either partaken in violence against Sunnis or stood by and watched while Shiite militias committed the violence.
As with almost every dire development in Iraq, this is largely a result of our failure to anticipate the insurgency. As you recall, American soldiers battled the Mahdi army back in 2004. Though it seemed at the time a welcome development that Moqtada Al Sadr was eventually brought into the fold as a player in the national government, the decision to accept the presence of his and other Shiite militias was made largely because we didn't have any choice. For one, because the security forces were so inept (or non-existent) for so long, it was necessary to allow the Shiites to retain their militias to defend their holy centers and themselves. The Shiites have never been willing to surrender their militias largely because they provided a measure of reliable security (indeed, the shrine was protected by Sunni security forces, as Samarra is a largely Sunni town that rejected the presence of a Shiite militia.) But as the Sunni insurgents have become stronger, and as our efforts to train the national security forces were met with continuing futility, it became necessary to prop up the security forces with the militias, to get bodies in uniform and men on the street. Unfortunately, the Shiites have largely seized on the opportunity to co-opt the security forces, as they've sought to one degree or another to co-opt the national government, and as a result much of the security forces act not at the behest of the national government, but Shiite political and religious leadership. The results of this approach have not been unanticipated: death squads, torture chambers, and security forces that are attacking or are complicit in attacking Sunni civilians and insurgents. As a result the divide between Sunnis and Shiites increases, and the risk of civil war grows. Thus our official policy now is to encourage the Shiite dominated security forces to act impartially towards the Sunnis, but as you can see from the quote above that was meeting mixed success even before the bombing. The bombing has only confirmed the fears of Shiites that when they fail to take their security into their own hands, they are at risk. The reprisals by the Shiite militias and Shiite dominated security forces have largely confirmed the fears of the Sunnis that a Shiite dominated government is hostile to them. And while there are those on both sides who continue to call for peace, so long as the Shiites can continue to undermine the validity of the government and co-opt the security forces to their own ends, this volatile and unstable situation will remain, and any spark may threaten civil war.
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