Insurgents’ violence a bid for civil war?

Concern was raised when the militia, once regarded as terrorist by U.S. officials, cooperated with security forces to capture four Palestinians and an Iraqi wanted for a bombing Thursday that killed at least 17 people at market in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad.

Al-Duleimi, the defense minister, has said he won’t merge militias such as the Badr Brigades and the Kurdish Peshmerga into Iraq’s army. The United States has called for the militias to be disbanded.

Civil war? Not yet, one analyst says
Despite the violence and communal frictions, Katzman, the analyst at the Congressional Research Service, doesn’t yet see Iraq tumbling into a sectarian war.

“Some would define this as some kind of civil war, but we don’t yet have entire distinct camps across the country opposing each other,” he said.

Iraq’s influential Shiite leaders, particularly Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, are also playing a key role in tamping down resentments that could erupt into civil war.

Laith Kuba, spokesman for al-Sistani, said Shiite retaliation against Sunnis over terrorist attacks could jeopardize the Shiites’ new role as the strongest political group.

“There is an awareness among Shiites now that we have the larger presence in the country, run the state and can benefit most” from peaceful relations, Kuba said.

Shiites, who make up 60 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people, were oppressed under Saddam Hussein, then emerged from the Jan. 30 elections with the biggest bloc in the National Assembly. They have allied with Kurds, who also were oppressed by Saddam, but have included Sunnis in the government in an effort to ease Sunni discontent over losing power.

‘The only scenario they have’
One factor working against the effort by foreign extremists to foment civil war is the widespread belief among Iraqis that homegrown anti-U.S. insurgents, either fervent nationalists opposed to foreign occupation or former Saddam loyalists angered by their fall from power, would not turn their weapons on fellow Iraqis.

So many Iraqis aim their anger over the attacks at foreign extremists and allied Iraqis who follow the puritanical Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam.

“Civilians are always going to be the easiest targets, and the Islamic extremists coming into the country are using them to try to torpedo Iraq’s political process,” said Ismael Zayer, editor in chief of the Iraqi newspaper al-Sabah al-Gadeed.

“Civil war is the only scenario they have,” Zayer said of the foreign terrorists. “These people have nothing else.”

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