California Conservative

Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki said in London yesterday, "Civil war will not happen to Iraq."  In an interview with BBC radio, Al-Maliki said that Iraq would not collapse into civil war.

“There is a sectarian issue, but the political leaders are working on putting an end to it.  Civil war will not happen to Iraq.”

Civil war is defined as a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country.  This is a brief history of what has led up to the current violence being witnessed today in Iraq:

Even though Sunnis are a minority group in Iraq (about 35 percent of the population), under Saddam Hussein and his largely Sunni Baath political party, they dominated the country and held powerful positions at all levels of government.

In addition to the majority Shiite Arabs (about 60 percent of the population) and Sunni Arabs, Iraq also has Kurds and Christians. Historically, there has always been tension among these groups.

When the United States invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam’s government, the Sunni leadership was wiped out.

Now we are witnessing the struggle for power by these group compounded by the instigation of Iran, Syria and Jordan, among others.  Thabit Abdullah, a Baghdad native who is an associate professor of history at York University in Toronto said: 

"As an historian, I ‘m always encouraged by the fact that there’s never been a sectarian war in Iraq, but there have continuously been tensions.  There are various groups both domestic and regional, and I would point the finger directly at Iran here and other groups also that find in its interest to whip up this kind hysteria to put pressure on the United States."

Back in February of this year when the 1,200 year old Golden Dome mosque in Samarra was bombed, despite the fact that sectarian violence arose, Iraqis by and large were unified together against the insurgency.  Sunni leaders banded together and condemned the act as not being representative of their sect in Iraq.   (detailed account of the show of solidarity HERE)

Al-Qaeda, the Sunni led terror group, has been contributing to the violence, as revealed by the confiscated al-Qaeda documents of May 2006.  These documents show that al-Qaeda’s intent is to provoke Iraq into a civil war, which has yet to happen as evidenced by their continual striving toward it.

Although Iraqi Prime Minster al-Maliki confirmed U.N. data showing an average of 100 civilians a day were killed in May and June, it is a result of criminals, insurgents and thug groups, influenced from provocations by outside organizations.   200 Iraqi tribal leaders from different Islamic sects joined in May to denounce and reject the sectarian violence sparked by al-Qaeda.  The terrorist formerly known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi left evidence on his computer, copied to a thumb drive found on his person after his death, of al-Qaeda’s intent to divide Iraq through sectarian violence.  Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie said of the found documents:

"Al-Qaeda is using everyone as a pawn to play in this war game, in this game of killing Iraqi people and destroying this country. (These documents) reveal how their central strategy is to divide and destroy.”

Prime Minister al-Maliki is correct when he said Iraq is not in a civil war.  Sectarian violence and acts of terrorism during a war on terror, with all their complexities, do not make civil war in and of themselves.  Iraqis have been banding together overwhelmingly to resist civil war.  There is simply too much unity to describe it as such.

Cross-posted at Amy’s Blog: Bottom Line Up Front

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Author: Amy Proctor, Iraq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.