Shiites flee reign of terror in mixed Iraqi city

[Barrett808]

Shiites flee reign of terror in mixed Iraqi city
by Ali Yussef

BAQUBA, Iraq (AFP) - As the death squads' grim threats began to mount against Shiite families in the Mafraq neighborhood of Baquba, north of Baghdad, fewer and fewer people attended their local prayer hall.

Soon, the only members of the embattled Shiite community to brave the narrow streets of this religiously-mixed quarter to come to worship were the caretaker and the muezzin who made the call to prayer.

Both men were eventually shot dead and then finally, four months ago, Sunni extremists planted a bomb in the mosque and blew it apart, ripping the heart out of the neighborhood and triggering a panicked exodus.

The destruction of Mafraq's shrine was a repetition in miniature of a more famous attack; February's demolition of the golden domed mosque in Samarra, a revered shrine among Iraq's Shiite population.

(more)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060930/wl_mideast_afp/iraqdiyalashiites

[TrogL]

1. So basically, we've got a 3-way civil war

Shites vs. Sunnis vs Kurds

[Igel]

3. That's far too simplistic.

Shi'ite vs Sunni
Sunni vs Kurd
To a small extent, Shi'ite vs Sunni
But those are just the conflicts between large-scale 'tribes'.

Within Shi'ite-dom, we have Fadlallah's group vs Sadr's group vs Hakim's group, the official army/police versus minor Shi'ite groups and Sunnis.

Within Sunni-dom, we have the often foreign AQ folks that many tribals don't like versus native secular Sunni groups, and a fair amount of tribal warfare that's non-religious in nature. And let's not forget the Ba'thists, which, in principle, cross sectarian lines, but which form a kind of tribe of their own.

Then there are, undoubtedly, criminal gangs in the mix, when they can be fairly stated to be non-political/religious in nature. Remember that Saddam emptied the prisons, and not all prisoners were political in nature; chaos also tends to bring out the gang-membership side of people, since they need a group to provide some sort of order to their lives. Self-selected tribes of convenience and profit.

What do you call a 15- or 18-way tribal conflict? Civil war?

[uppityperson]

2. k&r for the world.