The Iraqi Civil War

Prof. Joshua Landis links to "Anatomy of a Civil War", a lengthy but incisive Boston Review piece by Nir Rosen, who has lived in Iraq the past three years. He gives names, details, and concludes cuttingly:

Three years later, Shia religious parties such as the Iran-supported Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (its name a sufficient statement of its intentions), or SCIRI, controlled the country, and Shia militias had become the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army, running their own secret prisons, arresting, torturing, and executing Sunnis in what was clearly a civil war. And the Americans were merely one more militia among the many, watching, occasionally intervening, and in the end only making things worse. Iraqis’ hopes for a better future after Saddam had been betrayed.

He profiles the followers of Iraq's most powerful military sect:

The Mahdi was a ninth-century Shia leader who is said to have disappeared into an occult realm when he descended into a hole in Samarra to escape assassins. Shias see him as a messiah and believe that when he returns he will restore justice. Many view his return as imminent. Among Muqtada’s followers it is common to hear that the American army has come to kill the Mahdi. In a September 2006 sermon in Kufa, Muqtada told his followers that the Pentagon had a large file on the Mahdi and would greet his return with their military. But I was often assured that the Mahdi would kill all the Americans, and all the Jews, too, for good measure.

He notes the complexities of the Shia movement:

Muqtada also joined Sunnis in condemning the draft constitution. Like them, he opposed giving the Kurds local political control of their region in the north and also opposed the Shia SCIRI leader Abdel Aziz al Hakim’s goal of establishing autonomous Shia regions in the south. Muqtada’s followers demonstrated against the constitution, sometimes marching with Sunnis. In the summer of 2005 militiamen loyal to Muqtada clashed with SCIRI militiamen in several Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, Nasriya, Najaf, and Amara. The two Shia movements had a historic rivalry dating back to the time when competing clerics sought to succeed the first martyr. But Muqtada and his followers also resented SCIRI for living in exile and for returning on the backs of American tanks. They suspected SCIRI of being controlled by Iran, while accusing it publicly of collaborating with the United States. Most importantly, this was a turf war: each faction hoped to establish power among the Shias...

By the time I saw Muqtada in the spring of 2006, he was no longer meeting with the media for security reasons. While the rhetoric of nationalism still pervaded his sermons, so did thinly veiled references to Sunnis as infidels. All hope of an alliance between Sunnis and Shias was gone.

He describes how the conflict descended from America versus al-Qaida to Iraqi versus Iraqi:

But it all started in the last months of 2004. Shias had fought alongside Sunnis in April in the first battle of Fallujah, but by November, when a second battle between Americans and insurgents destroyed the Sunni city of Fallujah, some Shias were beginning to think that the Fallujans got what they deserved for harboring Zarqawi and his killing force. The near-daily insurgent attacks against Iraqi policemen and soldiers had taken on a sectarian tone, because these forces were mostly composed of poor Shia men; Sunnis avoided joining. And as Shias grew indifferent to Fallujans’ suffering, Sunnis became resentful, and some turned murderous. Sunni militias started targeting Shias as Shias, not as forces of the occupation.

And Rosen doesn't think things are about to get better any time soon:

The death of Zarqawi last June was not the long-awaited turning point. A new Zarqawi has already emerged, this time from among the Shias. In the summer of 2006 rumors began spreading through Baghdad of a shadowy killer known as Abu Dira, a nickname meaning "the armor bearer." In the Shia uprisings of 2004 he was said to have held off the Americans in southern Sadr City... All information about this man is based on rumor, but he is said to be in his 30s and called either Salim or Ismail.

Which is great news for me if I want to fly anywhere soon.

Overall, Rosen's piece is apocalyptic. While he may take the most negative view possible, it's hard to reject the possibility - indeed the probability - that he's largely correct.