Report finds Iraq teetering toward civil war
In a draft report due to be released Monday, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group warns that urgent measures are needed to avoid having Iraq slip into a civil war.
The dire warning was sparked by last week's bombing of a key Shiite shrine in Samarra and the subsequent wave of revenge attacks that has killed as many as 130 people. In particular, the influential think tank is worried by the Shiite-Sunni split that worsened dramatically over the course of 2005.
"Its most visible manifestation is a dirty war being fought between a group of small 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," the report says. Worse, the forces for moderation are alarmingly thin; even the conciliatory words of respected Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani are "increasingly falling on deaf ears."
U.S. influence is also waning, as rumors of withdrawal continue. Iraqi politics have been left with few voices of restraint.
"The secular center has largely vanished, sucked into the maelstrom of identity politics," the report says. The group calls for urgent action to avert a slide to civil war–a government of national unity that will disband militias and remake Iraq's constitution to de-emphasize sectarian and religious identity. But, the report concludes, the international community should also "start planning for the contingency that Iraq will fall apart, so as to contain the inevitable fallout of regional stability and security."
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