Now, it may be that slowing down the reaction speed of the civil war is useful. It might be. I am not sure. Not my area of knowledge. Is it better, to continue the analogy, to have a core meltdown than a prompt critical explosion?

That depends on who you want to come out the winner, doesn't it?

Good post.

The conundrum for the U.S. is that it cannot win militarily in Iraq without recourse to tactics that are politically unacceptable - i.e. total war " free-fire" counterinsurgency operations - and to which the Bush administration is unwilling to pay for by raising another 300,000 troops to implement in any event. As long as the U.S. is not winning militarily the Sunni community in Iraq, sees no reason to negotiate an end to their insurgency

The conundrum for the insurgency is that should the U.S. bolt abruptly then their Shiite and Kurdish rivals ( Govt. and loyalist paramilitaries) will have no choice but to literally fight for their lives in earnest, settling old scores along the way and creating new ones, for example, ethnically cleansing Kirkuk of Sunni Arabs. While fanatic jihadis like Zarqawi relish this scenario it isn't in the interest of most Sunni Iraqis as they will probably lose,possibly be destroyed, should the U.S. materially support their rivals.

What deal could be possibly made to avoid this scenario? Perhaps blanket immunity from prosecution for most Sunnis for crimes committed under the Bathist regime and during the insurgency and a constitutional arrangement that gives Sunnis more than their share of power and status than their numbers merit - with rewards flowing to "the hard men with guns" who can shut off most of the organized violence. This is a bribe kind of deal and should be viewed as such to get the central government a breathing space of stability to take root as a quasi-democracy in which all parties develop a stake.

I note there is not much chance of such a deal coming together or being accepted unless all parties reach a point where they feel like they are simultaneously peering into an abyss.

Since that kind of mutual realism is rare I expect a controlled civil war to expand to cover much of Iraq outside of Kurdistan whether U.S. troops remain or leave.

L-

so Iraq will split into a few stans with more-or-less low intensity conflict between them. if shit hits the fan, the kurds will split -- they are by now pretty much autonomous anyway. and the shi'ite arabs might very well also slip into their own autonomy. previously "mixed" areas will be "de-mixed". outside the violence, i don't really see why the fragmentation of iraq would be such a horrible thing. ditto for yugoslavia & lebanon. or syria, saudi-arabia, or pretty much any state on earth.

last time i checked, there are no eternal borders.

cheers,

--raf*

Because my facile commentator, "the unmixing" will involve a non-trivial amount of killing, even by current standards (see Yugoslavia, see Lebanon), much destruction and may put other areas into play.

Of course in the abstract it seems fine. You merely need to see it happening.

L-

that's precisely what i said - "outside the violence". i work with iraqis, on iraqi politics, so i'm actually right smack in the middle of it.

yet, just like you, i don't see that the scenario will be playing out any differently from what you & i envision.

i don't think that the u.s. gov't will miraculously do the right thing from tomorrow on. nor do the events of the past months instill much confidence in the far-sightedness of anyone of the groups playing politics in iraq right now.

what IS remarkable is that the violence in iraq isn't much worse.

--raf*

I'm glad you posted this topic because I've been pondering some related questions for a while now.

It's true that the insurgency isn't monolithic. The Bathists have different goals than do Al-Qaeda. But I can't work out who's behind the sectarian attacks and what it is they hope to gain by it.

Generic Sunni Groups: It looks like (or is meant to look like) that the aggressors are mostly Sunnis attacking Shias. But the Sunnis will be the hands-down losers in any serious sectarian conflict in Iraq. It won't even be close. In that sense, it isn't Lebanon. It's, I don't know, Kosovo, maybe. Except I'd guess that the Shia's aren't all that motivated to control the Sunnis. Should central Iraq become too much trouble, the Shias and Kurds (after acquiring a slight amount of extra real estate) will just disengage and take their oil money with them. Worse, any civil war will be fought almost entirely on Sunni territory. Sunnis have no chance, either politically, economically or militarily to dominate Iraq as they did in the past. Their best bet is to use the threat of violence to leverage their influence in a federated Iraq. Up until a few weeks ago, I thought this was exactly what they were doing. Now, I'm not so sure.

Bathists: While they won't like living in a Shia dominated state, I can't see why it would be in their interest to start a religious civil war. They're mostly Sunni and they have to realize that the Sunnis would get stomped in a full-scale conflict with the Shia, even assuming the Kurds stayed out of it. The best they could hope for is ruling over a rump, landlocked Sunni statelet with virtually no oil. Maybe it's a better-to-reign-in-hell-than-serve-in-heaven sort of thing.

Al-Qaeda: Al-Qaeda generally thinks Shias are nearly heretics so I suppose they have a motivation. They also have, I suppose, an interest in stirring things up just to stir things up. But from a strategic standpoint, It doesn't make a lot of sense. I suppose they might be hoping to create another failed statelet in which to operate in but, frankly, I don't see it. If they end up going one-on-one with the Bathist hard boys, my money's on the Bathists and I'm giving odds. More fundamentally, direct attacks on fellow-Muslims -- especially at prayer -- doesn't do their rep any good. Witness their back-peddling on Jordan. IIRC, there's evidence that Al-Qaeda had an internal debate on this very topic.

Iran: Iran would actually be a big winner in the event of a religious civil war. The Shias can't really lose because they don't have to win. They can simply pull out of central Iraq and leave the Sunnis to it. This isn't to minimize the human suffering this would cause but the fact remains that the Shias have a pretty wealthy and secure (at least from the risk of sectarian violence) home territory. Iran would have considerable influence with an independant Shia state in Southern Iraq. On the other hand, Iran would be taking a pretty huge risk in actively fomenting a Sunni-Shia civil war in Iraq should their activities ever become public. In addition, most of the attacks are on Shia. I can't really see Iran sponsoring attacks on Shia mosques, no matter how Machiavellian such a move would be.

Kurds: Why? They've gotten pretty much everything they want through the political process.

Generic Shia Groups: Attacking fellow Shias in Mosques and during funerals? I just can't see it.

Normally the axiom "Follow the money" can help sort out problems like this. But here, the groups that would have the most to gain from a religious civil war seem to be the groups least likely to be attempting to start one. If I had to pick one, I'd pick Al-Qaeda because they seem to have the most tenuous grip on reality.

Anyway, as I'm not all that knowledgable in this area, perhaps there are some things I've missed. Hopefully some of our resident experts will enlighten me!

TS

N.B. I can understand why all these groups have an interest in getting the Americans to leave. But starting a full-scale sectarian civil war seems . . . excessive given the problems it will cause, especially for Sunnis.

Regarding the issue of violence, I regard that as key.

Redoing the borders, etc., which are of course not holy or eternal, means putting lots of other people's lives in play. Turkey, Iran, Syria, maybe Saudiyah.

The entire Pandora's Box problem, once you open it.... It seems simple, but it isn't and can well lead to escalating violence and problems. A key reason I thought the entire idea of taking Sadaam down was an utter crock.

As for your question TS:

It is a human disease to think you can just grab what you want. It's not that there is an interest in starting a general civil war, outside the murderous fanatics, it is the dynamic of grabbing what one can - even as a defensive move - without some countervailing security inevitably pushes the country into a civil war dynamic.

It's a truism that [enter nation here] doesn't want civil war, as Robert Fisk for some reason says. NOBODY wants civil war, but it keeps happening.

As 't Lounsbury didn't put it, this is what is called the security dilemma; moves that for one party seem defensive and indeed necessary look to the other party like aggression and provocation, and vice versa.

Alex

Thank you, indeed I was thinking of the security dilema but did not explicitely put it that way.

There is at least one self-stabilizing factor in the situation: the Kurds and Shia have basically got what they wanted, and they are the vast majority. We can already see the results: the Kurds aren't involved in the fighting, and the Shia militias aren't responding nearly as viciously as they could.

Regarding the comments on Al-Qaeda, I think their general plan is to incite an international Sunni-Shi'ite war, which would also make their other task of toppling all Arab governments (primarily Saudi Arabia) easier. Getting foreign Sunnis involved is the only way to take Iraq as their own. The fighting in Iraq also keeps the "cause" alive, which is probably the primary goal at this point anyways, regardless of material results.

I'm not clear where you stand on the US pulling out entirely Lounsbury, maybe you haven't decided. It's true the Iraqi forces can become as big a part of the problem as anything else, becoming a training and equipment source for militias. But there's no real way around that, Iraqis have to become involved in their own security. It's the pacing of the task and care with which it is undertaken that will make or break it. The US admin is only planning modest troops withdrawals in the near future (150,000 to 138,000 after elections, last I heard). Handing over the entire situation to Iraqi forces by next November, though, seems less realistic, as some Congressmen are calling for. The US and allied troops are a stabilizing factor. If they aren't being effective enough now, they have to find a way to be more effective, not pull out completely. If they did pull out, everything would just become more desperate. Is there a magic solution, or just gradual grinding until things cool down? Or just do everything that's being done, just better? Hard to tell.

Splitting the country up has plenty of problems. Population shifting and cleansing, as mentioned already. Also, a Shi'ite state perhaps less able to resist Iranian influence; a Kurdish state that suddenly makes Turkey angry; a very poor Sunni state, under stronger Baathist/Al-Qaeda control, assuming no moderate Sunni organization emerges. The upshot is maybe they'd give up on conquering each other. The transition, though, assuming it took place in the not too far future, would be brutal.

Of course, any options considered have to be balanced against US domestic politics.

It is a human disease to think you can just grab what you want. It's not that there is an interest in starting a general civil war, outside the murderous fanatics, it is the dynamic of grabbing what one can - even as a defensive move - without some countervailing security inevitably pushes the country into a civil war dynamic.

This is certainly true. You're describing a bottom-up scenario and that's certainly going on in Iraq. There's lots of reports of individual attacks by Sunnis on Shias and vice versa as well as Sunnis and Shias moving out of mixed areas and into majority Sunni and Shia areas.

But there's more going on, as well. Some relatively large and well-organized group has decided to try and spark a sectarian civil war. Suicide bombing generally (though not always as in the case of the London bombers) requires a decent sized organization on the ground for recruitment and indoctrination as well as for the technical end of things. Multiple, coordinated suicide bombings (and other attacks) over a long period of time argue for a large organization with a specific agenda. No question these people are murderous fanatics, though.

What's going on in Iraq seems to go well beyond the "security dilemma." Many of these attacks appear to be deliberate outrages designed not to frighten Shias but to enrage them. Attacking a mosque or a funeral procession is a calculated insult. If you're just trying to intimidate people, it's not best practice to attack a bunch of guys while they are literally beating themselves bloody in a religious frenzy -- you'll only piss 'em off.

In addition, many of the attacks are happening in places like Karbala. Note even the most deranged Sunni insurgent group can imagine that Shias will ever be intimidated into leaving Karbala.

Sadly, it's also untrue that nobody ever wants civil war. Outside groups often want civil wars because they believe they advance their own interests. This is the norm rather than the exception and the list goes back to antiquity.

Worse, internal groups want civil wars that they think they can win. This is why civil wars often take so long to resolve. They continue until all parties are exhausted and convinced that victory is impossible. This is what makes no sense to me in Iraq. For Sunnis, not only is victory impossible, victory, in the sense of creating an independent "Sunnistan," would be a complete disaster for them.

I think that two of the players are insufficiently analyzed. Amir Taheri (in an article whose url escapes me at the moment) has posited that Iran is trying to divide Iraqi Shia. The motivations are:
1. Iraqi Shia are convinced as a matter of faith that the Iranian system is heretical and a unified Shia government in Iraq is thus a security threat.
2. By being divided and vulnerable, Iran becomes their natural leader and protector so long as they are no caught red handed slaughtering their coreligionists.

Add Iranian interference and the dynamic changes. Sistani and co. want to settle the intra-country violence because they see an external threat from the worst kind malicious neighbor.

There's your reason why Iraqi violence isn't much worse than it is and why the civil war narrative is not inevitable. Iraq is not fighting in isolation.