On the ground, it's a civil war

On the ground, it's a civil war

DEFINING A CONFLICT
On the ground, it's a civil war
The debate over what to call Iraq's war is lost on many Iraqis as shadowy Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents wage their deadly conflict
By Aamer Madhani
Tribune staff reporter

April 14, 2006

BAGHDAD -- The conflict in Iraq is not marked by front lines or raging battles between warring Iraqi factions. There is no Green Line separating sectarian militias, as in Beirut in the 1970s and 1980s, nor are there clearly defined armies and commanders. But by any measure, Iraqis will tell you that their country is embroiled in what amounts to civil war.

Since the Feb. 22 bombing of the al-Askari mosque, a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, waves of suicide bombers have struck other Shiite targets, killing hundreds of civilians. They have been followed by reprisals in the forms of assassinations and kidnappings, with hundreds of Sunni Muslims bound, gagged and shot in the head across Baghdad and surrounding towns.

"We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more," former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi told the British Broadcasting Corp. last month. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

The dictionary definition says a civil war involves war between geographical sections or political factions of the same nation. An estimated 30,000 Iraqis have died in violence since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. There are no accurate figures of how many were killed by U.S. troops, but slayings of Iraqis by fellow Iraqis have increased dramatically as the war has progressed.

Many U.S. and Iraqi officials insist that the violence engulfing the country does not constitute civil war. But by any reasonable standard, "the conflict in Iraq is a civil war," said James Fearon, a Stanford University political scientist who specializes in the study of civil conflict. "The rate [of killings] is comparable to Sri Lanka, the Lebanese war and Bosnia," all of which were widely regarded as civil wars.

Larry Diamond, a former adviser to the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, said the question is only one of semantics. "You can use whatever language you want to describe it, but the violence is increasing and it is becoming more vengeful and polarized," Diamond said.

Thousands of Iraqi families--about 60,000 people--have fled their homes in the face of intimidation campaigns by Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, most of them since the al-Askari bombing, according to the nation's Ministry of Displacement and Migration.

Mubarak warns of civil war

The cycle of sectarian violence has put the entire region on edge. Last weekend, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned that Iraq was close to full-scale civil war, questioned whether the Shiite-dominated government had an unhealthy relationship with Iran and speculated that the situation could further destabilize the already troubled Middle East.

On the ground in Baghdad, U.S. commanders responsible for training and equipping Iraqi security forces acknowledge that the Iraqi police rolls are riddled with members of Shiite militias. These militias are allied with such powerful clerics as Motqada Sadr, who controls the Madhi Army which twice in 2004 fought street battles against U.S. troops in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

U.S. officials say the militias have a major role in the sectarian attacks.

"We're not stupid. We know for a fact that they're killing people," said Lt. Col. Chris Pease, deputy commander of the U.S. military's police training programs in eastern Baghdad. "We dig the damn bodies out of the sewer all the time. But there's a difference between knowing something and proving something."

Pease said he recently had a conversation with an Iraqi police officer that underscored how vexing the militias have become. Out of earshot of the police officer's commander, Pease said, he asked the young cop to give him an honest analysis of what's going on in the street.

"He said to me, `Do you want me . . . to tell you the truth?'" Pease recalled. "His assessment was that the militias are everywhere ... and his officers weren't going to do anything about that because their units are infiltrated and they know what the cost would be for working against the militias."

Sunni-oriented television stations run messages on news programs, warning viewers not to cooperate with the Shiite-dominated security forces unless the Iraqis are accompanied by U.S. troops. Shiite leaders accuse Sunni politicians of being complicit in insurgent attacks.

The violence is fueled by years of resentment among Shiites for their persecution under the Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein and by fears among Sunnis that they would be persecuted in turn under a Shiite government.

In a recent internal staff report jointly written for Congress by U.S. Embassy and military officials in Iraq, seven of Iraq's 18 provinces were listed in serious or critical condition in regard to the political, security and economic situation, The New York Times reported Sunday. The U.S. government report, written before the al-Askari bombing, stands in stark contrast with U.S. officials' public assertions that instability is isolated in a few hot spots.

After an attack on the Buratha mosque in Baghdad last week killed more than 80 Shiites, Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer, leader in the Shiite political party Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, accused Sunni leaders of spreading lies about Shiite militias, including allegations that renegade security forces within the Interior Ministry were using the mosque as a torture center.

Since the attack, mourners have gathered daily in the mosque's courtyard. They mourn in front of memorials fashioned from blood-spattered turbans, a burned wheelchair and photographs of men who died in the bombing.

Haji Haider, a spokesman for al-Sagheer, said Sunni leaders are testing the patience of the Shiite masses. "[Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's leading Shiite cleric] has told the people to show restraint, but the Sunni politicians are motivating their people to violent action against the Shiite mosques and neighborhoods," Haider said. "How long will the [Shiite] people show restraint?"

For Raad Taha, a Sunni taxi driver, the civil war began when a Shiite acquaintance from his favorite tea shop falsely accused him of being an insurgent responsible for the car bombing deaths of several Shiites.

Eight armed men from the Mahdi Army stormed Taha's apartment about three weeks ago and dragged him away in front of his wife and three young children. They told his terrified wife that they were only taking him to their office to ask him a few questions and would have him back within an hour.

Instead, they held Taha for more than 24 hours in which they beat him and interrogated him. Then they ran him and his family out of their home.

"The Shiites don't want us to live together [with them]," Taha said. "They've made a war against the Sunnis."

Hopes for unity government

U.S. and Iraqi officials have said the civil strife would be eased by the quick formation of a national unity government followed by the disarming of the Shiite militias. But four months after the election of parliament, no government has been formed. Sunnis, Kurds and secular politicians have objected to the Shiite coalition's nominee for prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Rival factions within the Shiite coalition have also turned against al-Jaafari, publicly stating that he has become too divisive while privately maneuvering to push their own candidates for the top position.

Meanwhile, the Shiite militias have asserted their will.

Along with the Mahdi Army, there is the Badr Organization, founded in Iran and affiliated with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Sunnis accuse both militias of directing much of the sectarian violence that has plagued the country since the Samarra bombing.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has said that militias are now a bigger problem than the Sunni-led insurgency. On a recent visit to Baghdad, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that solving the militia problem must be the new government's priority.

But from top officials to the lowest street cop, there appears to be no will to disband the militias.

"It's not the time to ask the militias to put down their arms when we cannot properly provide security," said Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Abdul Rahman al-Yusuf, a Sunni. The general said his national police brigade is 87 percent Shiite and includes some members aligned with the Badr Organization. "When the Iraqi army and police can provide security, then we can tell the militias that it is time to stop."

Despite the obstacles, U.S. troops working with the Iraqi interior forces remain optimistic that they can reduce the influence of militias in the force.

"Training and equipping a force, while knowing that at least some element is infiltrated by militias, is a difficult situation," said Capt. Ryan Lawrence, an intelligence officer with the U.S. Army's 2nd Brigade Special Police Transition Team. "They are putting themselves at great risk and, overwhelmingly, most of these guys are here for the right reason. The younger [police officers] are eager for training and want to be taught to do it the right way."

Other armed Shiites, however, are not doing it the right way. Taha, the Sunni taxi driver, said he was lucky to be freed by his captors.

He said the Mahdi Army militiamen drove him around the capital for several hours before finally taking him to a house in the militia's bastion of Sadr City, a neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad. There they beat him with wood planks and their fists and feet while screaming at him to confess that he was a Sunni terrorist involved in car bombing plots.

During the pummeling, Taha tried to explain that he is indeed a Sunni but not a terrorist. He lived with his Shiite wife in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Bayaa for the past 15 years. He was struggling to make ends meet as a taxi driver but he would never kill anyone for all the money in the world, Taha said he told his captors.

His captors brought in a bottle of bleach and razor blades. They told him that if he didn't confess, they would tear him apart and pour the bleach over his wounds. Taha said he told the Mahdi men that they might be able to get him to confess through torture but none of it would be true.

Taha said his hands were bound and he was forced to lie on his side and his captors turned him toward a wall so he could not see them. One of the militiamen told him they were bringing in a witness who had been secretly monitoring him.

The witness said Taha was regularly traveling to a Sunni neighborhood and meeting with insurgents. How was it possible, the voice implored, that a poor man could purchase a car, implying that he was earning money by working for the insurgency.

"It was a man named Hassan that I knew from the tea shop," Taha said. "I screamed out his name and said, `Why are you telling all these lies?' He knows that I was born on Haifa Street [a famous street that runs through a Sunni neighborhood] and was meeting with my old friends. I only had money for the car because I had sold a piece of land that was distributed by Saddam many years back to all the workers at the phone company where I worked."

Taha said the leader among his captors soon determined that he was telling the truth. The Mahdi men turned their questioning on Hassan and sent Taha home in a hired taxi.

As soon as he walked into his apartment, his cell phone rang. One of his Mahdi Army captors was on the line and told Taha to hand the phone to his wife.

Abductors' apology

"He said to her he was sorry that they kept me longer than one hour as they promised her, and we should tell no one about the incident," said Taha, with tears streaming as he recalled the incident. "When she hung up the phone, I told her that we had to leave [the apartment]."

Taha's wife took the three children and is living with her parents in eastern Baghdad. Taha has been staying at the homes of friends and family in western Baghdad, sleeping on their floors. In fear of the Mahdi Army, he won't stay anywhere for more than a couple of nights.

Other families have fared even worse in their run-ins with militias.

Mohammed al-Jubouri, 40, said two nephews were killed by suspected Mahdi Army members in a matter of days last month.

The first, Essa al-Ani, 20, was riddled with bullets only 500 yards from his family home in western Baghdad on March 17, when men wearing the signature black outfits of the Mahdi Army drove through his neighborhood and randomly emptied gun magazines at pedestrians.

The next day, after al-Ani's funeral, al-Jubouri's nephew Ahmed al-Jubouri asked a cousin to drop him across town at a garage where his car was being repaired. It was the last time he was seen alive.

Mohammed al-Jubouri said he and other relatives combed the police stations and hospitals. Finally, at one police station, an officer said he recalled manning a checkpoint with some Mahdi Army officials who had taken a young man matching Ahmed's description into custody.

Three days after he was last seen, Ahmed al-Jubouri's body was found in the morgue. His corpse, with a bullet wound to the head and markings on his inner thighs that appeared to be caused by an electric drill, had been recovered in a trash heap.

"We need to divide the country into three," Mohammed al-Jubouri said. "We cannot live with these people."

- - -

Violence escalates in wake of mosque bombing

The Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite mosque in Samarra triggered a surge in sectarian violence in Iraq that some are calling a civil war. However, Bush administration officials disagree with that assessment.

KEY: SECTARIAN VIOLENCE / NOTABLE QUOTES

Feb. 22

A bomb destroys the golden dome of al-Askari, one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines, in Samarra. At least 25 Sunni mosques in the city are attacked in retaliation.

Feb. 23

More than 100 people die in sectarian violence triggered by the Samarra bombing. Among those killed are several Sunni imams.

Feb. 25

At least 45 are killed in continuing sectarian violence, including the massacre of 13 members of a Shiite family in Baqouba.

Feb. 26

Mortar shells strike a Shiite area of Baghdad, killing at least 10.

Feb. 28

At least 60 die in Baghdad, most of them killed when five bombs detonate in Shiite neighborhoods.

March 3

Suspected Sunni Arab insurgents kill 10 Shiite factory workers near Baqouba.

March 8

The bodies of 18 Sunni men are found stuffed into an abandoned truck in western Baghdad. Many of the victims show signs of torture.

March 12

Bombings at two markets in Baghdad's heavily Shiite Sadr City

Neighborhood kill at least 58.

March 14

Iraqi police announce the discovery of 87 bodies in Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad.

March 17

Nineteen Shiite pilgrims are killed or wounded by bombings and drive-by shootings in Baghdad while traveling to the holy city of Karbala.

March 5

"I do not believe that they're on the verge of civil war."

--Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on NBC's "Meet the Press"

March 13

"I wish I could tell you that the violence is waning and that the road ahead will be smooth. It will not. There will be more tough fighting and more days of struggle, and we will see more images of chaos and carnage in the days and months to come."

--President Bush

March 19

"It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. ...

If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."

--Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, to the BBC

March 21

"We all recognize ... that there's sectarian violence. But the way

I look at the situation is that the Iraqis took a look and decided not to go to civil war. ...

This is a moment where the Iraqis had a chance to fall apart, and they didn't."

--President Bush

April 6

At least 10 are killed in a car bombing at a Shiite cemetery outside the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf.

April 7

Suicide bombers kill more than 80 at the Shiite Buratha mosque in Baghdad.

April 8

"Is there a civil war? Yes, there is an undeclared civil war that has been there for a year or more.

All these bodies that are discovered in Baghdad, the slaughter of pilgrims heading to holy sites, the explosions, the destruction, the attacks against the mosques are all part of this."

--Iraqi Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal

Thursday (April 13)

A Shiite shrine in Baqouba is destroyed by three explosions. A Sunni Arab politician's brother is assassinated in Baghdad.

Sources: Tribune reports, The White House, Associated Press

Chicago Tribune

----------

COMING SUNDAY

How the U.S. role in Iraq's war raises troubling legal questions.

- - -

About the reporter

Tribune staff reporter Aamer Madhani has made eight reporting trips to Iraq since the U.S. invasion in March 2003, spending more than a year in the country in the process. He has covered the hand-over of sovereignty by the United States, the trial of Saddam Hussein, two national elections and the referendum on the new Iraqi Constitution. He also has covered U.S. troops in the field. Madhani, a native of Forest Park, joined the Tribune in 2001.