Sectarian Strife Greatest Threat Facing Iraq

A simple cellular ring tone personifies the palpable sectarian tension raging in Iraq today. On May 10 of this year an inadvertent cell phone ring brought a meeting of Iraq's parliament, the national unity legislative body often portrayed as the cure-all of Iraqi woes, to adjournment.

Sunni Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani was conducting a routine media interview in the lobby of Iraq's parliament when the distinct sound of a ringing cell phone interrupted the on-goings. In a normal world the brief interruption would be nothing more than a minor inconvenience. However, nothing in Iraq is remotely normal these days. The phone's ringer, belonging to MP Gufran al-Saidi, was set to a Shiite religious chant.

The electronic intonation irked al-Mashhadani to such a degree that he sent his personal guards to resolve the issue. After the phone rang for a second time the parliament speaker's guards engaged the perpetrator's entourage, causing a small scuffle to break out.

The row later caused several others to join al-Saidi in abruptly storming out of parliament to protest the incident. Parliament was adjourned for some 20 minutes until those upset could be coaxed back into rejoining the session.

The fact that a seemingly harmless phone call can momentarily bring Iraq's parliament to its knees illustrates the divide gripping the country. Sectarian tension in Iraq is nothing new. It goes back for centuries. However, the ferocity of the angst witnessed today is unparalleled in the country's history.

The U.S.-led military invasion in March 2003 lit a match in the tinderbox that is Iraq. Every fire needs a spark and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s secular regime provided just that and more.

During Hussein's 24-year reign as Iraqi strongman sectarian differences inside Iraq – a historically culturally dissevered nation – were suppressed either by ideology, force, or a combination of the two.

The long-standing qualms lying just below the surface of Iraqi society came bubbling furiously back to the forefront when, in March of 2003, the U.S. toppled Saddam and his Baath Party, subversively changing the hands of power in the Land of the Two Rivers.

The country's majority Shiites, who comprise approximately 60% of the populace, finally garnered political control of Iraq after having been forced to take a back seat to the nations minority Sunnis for the better part of the last century.

When people are thrust into a potentially life or death situation the human body responds in the most primitive of ways, by enacting the "fight-or-flight" mechanism, in order to maintain survival. The people of Iraq are no different. In a country where pretty much anyone can be killed anywhere for any reason Iraqis have reverted back to rudimentary cultural norms of centuries past.

Iraqis are increasingly banding together along age-old ethnic, tribal, and religious lines in order to better ensure survival. Mixed neighborhoods where average Iraqis once lived harmoniously amongst one another are becoming a thing of the past with citizens packing up and moving, often by force, to areas where they constitute the majority. The same can be said for the once fairly common Sunni-Shiite marriage.

Although insurgent violence still poses a great threat to coalition troops – evidenced by the 44 U.S. troop fatalities in July – as well as average citizens, the real battle for Iraq is now being fought between the nations' sects.

Baghdad, the ancient capital city home to nearly six million, is the undisputable epicenter of the bloody fight. Its ethnically diverse population is a microcosm for the entire country.

Death in Baghdad is often as quick as it is inauspicious. A car rigged with explosives placed outside a mosque or a random drive-by shooting can claim a life just as effectively as a targeted assassination.

A growingly popular form of murder begins with kidnapping. As testament to the systematic nature that killing has adopted in Baghdad, the bodies of those abducted are often found the same way the previous corpse was: bound, blindfolded, shot in the head, and dumped on a side street. Many bear signs of extreme torture reminiscent of Saddam's day such as electrical shock or having holes drilled directly into their bones.

The Baghdad government's inability to provide protection to its citizens has led many of them to take security into their own hands.

Many of the abductions and murders are blamed on so called "death squads" operating throughout Iraq. These bands of rogue militants are usually tied to a sectarian militia. Maverick Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's "Mahdi Army" and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq's (SCIRI) "Badr Brigade" are believed to be responsible for many of the deaths.

The Mahdi Army gained prominence in 2004 when it fought pitched battles against U.S. troops throughout Iraq's southern Shiite heartland. The Badr Brigade, meanwhile, is the militant wing of the SCIRI, Iraq's most powerful political entity. Iraq's previous interior minister and current finance minister, Bayan Jabr, a former Badr commander himself, stacked the ministry with Badr officials.

Both are thoroughly entrenched in Iraq's government, leaving them available to operate largely unmolested. For their part, both groups deny any role in the sectarian killings plaguing Iraq although that claim is regarded as erroneous by most. Both also have sympathizers or outright members throughout the upper-echelon levels of Iraq's security forces, especially the police department.

Witnesses to many of the abductions routinely say the perpetrators sport the vehicles, uniforms, and equipment of Iraq's police force. This speculation has led to a great deal of mistrust among those often targeted in the raids, Iraq's Sunnis. This subsequently has garnered the Sunni-dominated insurgency an increased level of credibility and legitimacy. Many Sunnis now view insurgent groups operating in Iraq as the best and most capable force for protecting targeted Sunnis.

With more support comes the ability to conduct more attacks. Those attacks are increasingly sectarian in nature. Furthermore, insurgent attacks, which more often than not target Shiites, increase the popularity of Shiite militias who are viewed in much the same light by Shiites as Sunnis view insurgent groups.

The February 22 bombing of the Shiite al-Askari shrine in Samarra marked a ghastly turning point in the sectarian battle playing out in the midst of the Iraq war.

Thousands of Iraqis were killed in the communal tit-for-tat violence that followed the destruction of the golden-domed mosque. The bloody days following the attack brought Iraq the closest it has been to an all-out civil war.

For many Shiite's, the mosque bombing was the preverbal straw that broke the camel's back. For years, Iraq's majority Shiites largely stood idly by as Sunni Salafists, like the late al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, massacred them by the thousands. Shiite clerics continued to urge restraint as their patrons were being killed and maimed by car bomb after car bomb.

Any restraint left came down with the mosque in Samarra, which contains the tombs of the tenth and eleventh Shiite Imams. Shiite's, by engaging in retaliatory violence, for the first time bought into al-Qaida in Iraq's hell-bent strategy of creating a broad-reaching sectarian conflict inside Iraq's territorial borders.

They haven't looked back and either has the violence.