"I don't know how else you would describe something which has people from one community systematically attacking the other," said Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia during the civil war in the Balkans during the Clinton administration and who helped negotiate an end to the conflict in Croatia. "Sunni Arab insurgents have been attacking Shiite clergy, politicians and ordinary Shiites for simply being who they are ... and then you have a response, from the Shiites."
This is true enough, and by any reasonable onlooker without any agenda of their own, it would be hard to find an alternate definition that fits exactly what's going on in Iraq. You do not have a unified government which is being attacked by outsiders, you have a fractious government (which has very little power as yet) being undermined by insiders (and I do mean insiders; some of them are members of the government) as well as being attacked by outsiders (namely Al-Quaeda in Iraq).
You would really think it's not such a big deal what we call the situation. If it's civil war, right now it's certainly disorganized and sporadic. Despite the dozens being hurt or killed every week, it's not between large, organized factions with clear geographic boundaries. That's one reason it's hard to recognize. But you can't dismiss it simply because it doesn't resemble the American Civil War, or the Vietnam confilct. Every situation is always unique.
But to get back to the point, the camp whose reputation is staked on a successful outcome (the Bush administration) does not even want to start using the phrase "civil war". Of course Bush supporters can claim that any desire to use this phrase represents a veiled attack on Bush and his policies in Iraq and expresses a defeatist desire. On the other hand, it's obviously a political ploy on the Bush administration's part to keep the media from using this phrase because while it in no way changes the actual situation in Iraq, the perception of the war in the public mind is crucial to support for Bush. If the media begins to freely use this phrase, it will represent a critical recognition of Bush's failure thus far. Thus the phrase is politically charged in a way that academics do not desire, but which must be faced.
The reason that recognition for the status of civil war in Iraq is important is that to a large extent, American policy in Iraq was initially shaped on hopes and dreams. We have been accused, validly in much of the world's opinion, for planning based on wishful thinking more than on hard-headed realism. Of course, for those of us who always opposed the war not only for moral reasons but because we thought it was a bad idea, this is a criticism we've leveled at the administration ever since. This is not without justification.
Outside Bush's head, his statements keep crashing into reality. Tuesday night, ABC's Terry Moran reminded him, "Mr. President, before the war, you and members of your administration made several claims about Iraq: that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators with sweets and flowers; that Iraqi oil revenue would pay for most of the reconstruction; and that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction but, as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said, 'We know where they are.' How do you explain to Americans how you got that so wrong?"
This is not something the "liberal" media cooked up to embarrass Bush. Nor is this a twisting of the administration's original words and intent. The Bush administration did believe we could knock off Saddam, install some American companies to start the oil flowing, then walk out less than six months later.
The implications of what to call the violence reach beyond semantics, say analysts who believe civil war is already a reality. Until the United States faces up to the true situation on the ground, it cannot take the necessary steps that might help mitigate the deteriorating situation.
"The flaw that we've had in Iraq from day one is that we've been ostrichlike with our dealings in our reality on the ground in the country," said Galbraith, who now is a senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington. "At each stage of the process, the administration has been in denial about what's going on."
"There are some people trying to, obviously, foment sectarian violence -- some have called it civil war -- but it didn't work," President Bush said Saturday, expressing confidence that U.S. policy and Iraqi security forces will quash the current wave of violence. "I know we're going to succeed if we don't lose our will."
We need to acknowledge reality. The Bush administration needs, for the first time, to deal with things as they are, not as they wish them to be. Let's call it civil war, and let's let that be a wake-up call. Our plans are not working fast enough, if at all. We made a commitment to rebuild Iraq, but we made no plan. We need to rectify that, and quickly. Reality, Mr. President, is not something you can politic your way out of.
The situation on the ground is complex and often violent.
Estimates of the number of Iraqis killed since the fall of Hussein's regime run as high as 75,000. Iraqi government officials have said at least two-thirds of the victims are civilian casualties of violence inflicted by Iraqi militants.
But after the U.S.-backed provisional authority passed the reins of power to a temporary government dominated by a coalition of Shiite religious parties in January 2005, the violence became reciprocal.
Human rights organizations, such as the London-based Amnesty International, have reported an increasing campaign against Sunnis by Shiite death squads operating in Baghdad and in south-central Iraq under the auspices of the Interior Ministry, which controls Iraqi police, and which is run by a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite religious party with ties to Iran.
The State Department's annual global human rights review, released Wednesday, said that in Iraq, "reports increased of killings by the government or its agents that may have been politically motivated."
The Iraqi government has consistently denied the allegations, but in November, U.S. forces liberated 169 mostly Sunni prisoners from a secret Baghdad prison, saying the prisoners had been tortured by their captors.
As a matter of fact, the government has finally acknowledged this problem.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Iraqi Defense and Interior ministries have reached an agreement requiring them to conduct all raids jointly, in a bid to stop the operations of alleged death squads masquerading as police commandos.
Sunni Muslims have complained for months that their community is under attack from death squads operating under the guise of Interior Ministry commandos. Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, who controls Iraq police, is a Shiite.
[...]Iraq, which has suffered under a brutal insurgency for nearly three years, more recently has been wracked by sectarian violence after the bombing of a Shiite shrine Feb. 22 in Samarra.
Afterward, Interior Ministry forces were accused of allowing Shiite militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to conduct revenge attacks against Sunnis.
Last Wednesday, gunmen wearing police commando uniforms stormed an Sunni-owned Iraqi security company that relied heavily on ex-military men from Saddam's regime, spiriting away 50 hostages. The ministry denied involvement and called the operation a "terrorist act."
Of course for observers it's always hard to discern the internal motives of people that we don't understand and whose culture we are not familiar with. Those who think that simply because two men are Shiite they operate in concert are falling into the trap of assuming that they are a homogeneous group instead of regarding them as individuals. I can tell you that just because two people are Catholic, it does not mean they are going to act in concert (did John F. Kennedy answer to the pope?) The truth is, we don't know if or why they would act in concert. However, it would also be a fallacy to assume that this is not the case simply because we're trying to avoid being biased.
I can easily see how Sadr benefits by disclaiming the violence while simultaneously encouraging it. Look at these statements by him:
Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr Monday blasted both the United States and Sunnis in the wake of the attack.
"What's the point of you staying here if you can't even protect or help people?" said the cleric, speaking of the US military presence in the country which he has long opposed.
He also lashed out at US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for saying US troops would not interfere should civil war break out in the country.
"May God damn you. You said in the past that civil war would break out if you were to withdraw, and now you say that in case of civil war you won't interfere," Sadr told a news conference.
[...]Sadr, whose representatives belong to the ruling Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, also criticized the Sunni Committee of Muslims Scholars for failing to clearly speak out against the most recent attacks.
On the one hand it's a completely reasonable criticism of American hypocrisy. He makes us seem like the bad guys because we can't control the country and we're failing at rebuilding it. But on the other hand he's obviously currying favor with the Iraqi government, which appears to me like it could be hedging his bets in case a strong Iraqi government does emerge. The less he seems anti-government, the more likely he is to be able to retain his power afterward. In another quote:
A key to Monday's relative peace was anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's refusal to be provoked. With thousands of his Mahdi Army militiamen ready to fight, the Shiite leader called for calm and national unity. It was the second time in less than three weeks that Iraqis stood at the precipice of civil war but pulled back.
[...]Al-Sadr, addressing reporters in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, appeared to absolve the larger Sunni community, saying: "Sunnis and Shiites are not responsible for such acts." Instead, he blamed al-Qaida in Iraq and U.S. forces.
Of course he could be hedging his bets the other way. He wouldn't want to be seen as lessening his hardline anti-Sunni stance, so of course he could still be secretly condoning or even ordering attacks on Sunnis. In case the Iraqi government fails, afterwards he can say that he always stayed true to his Shiite community, but had to play along so he wouldn't be attacked.
Now I don't know anything, so don't start quoting my conspiracy theories. I'm just saying it could be an explanation. There are plenty of other reasons, I'm sure, that are just as satisfactory for such behavior. The one thing we do know is that Al-Quaeda is deliberatly trying to fracture whatever peace does exist between Sunnis and Shiitees. It's unbearable to them that the Iraqis might possibly accept American forces and democracy. But that's enough for now; if one of the other wise men wants to, he can explicate that theme.
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