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Edited on Fri Sep-23-05 07:51 PM by whistle
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September 12, 2005
Civil war underway in Iraq, experts say
By Riad Kahwaji
<Special to the Amry Times>
Iraq’s long-feared civil war is escalating and will engulf the country unless ethnic leaders take drastic steps, according to officials and analysts.
“The current sectarian and ethnic killings in Iraq are actually the beginning of a civil war,” said Georges Sada, an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafaari and the executive secretary of the Iraq Institute for Peace. “Sectarian divisions in Iraq started back in the ’90s, which prepared the ground for the civil war spreading today.”
Although sectarian and ethnic killings in Iraq have been increasing since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, American officials downplay deep and bitter cultural differences among the country’s major groups: Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. They reject suggestions Iraq is headed toward civil war, much less already embroiled in one. They blame the insurgency on disgruntled ex-Baathists and Sunnis, who make up 20 percent of the population and who enjoyed a dominant role under deposed leader Saddam Hussein.
Now the three groups are grappling for future status and power. A three-month effort produced a constitution that was rejected by the Sunnis upon its introduction in mid-August. Backed by allies in smaller Islamic parties, Sunni groups appear to be stepping up an insurrection that has inflicted heavy losses, mostly through car and suicide bombings, on U.S. and coalition forces and Iraq’s largely Shiite army and national police.
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