Toronto Star : Pentagon: Country ripe for civil war

Pentagon: Country ripe for civil war

Sectarian bloodshed now `core conflict' | Sunni, Shiite death squads taking toll

STEWART M. POWELL | SPECIAL TO THE STAR | September 2, 2006

WASHINGTON—The Pentagon told Congress yesterday that Iraqi casualties have surged 51 per cent over the last three months — with mounting sectarian executions of civilians pushing the U.S.-occupied nation to the brink of civil war.

Iraqi insurgent attacks against U.S. forces no longer represent the central focus of fighting in Iraq. Instead, a quarterly Pentagon report said the "core conflict" now is the deepening sectarian bloodshed between predominant Shiite Muslims who gained power after the U.S. invasion and hard-pressed Sunni Muslims who lost clout with the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

The report said sectarian death squads, foreign terrorists and anti-American insurgents boosted the Iraqi death toll by about 1,000 per month from June to August — a 51 per cent increase over the previous three months.

The bodies of at least 3,400 Iraqis were delivered to the coroner's office in Baghdad in June and July alone — 90 per cent of them executed at close range, the report said.

The average number of weekly attacks on U.S. troops, Iraqi troops and Iraqi civilians had increased 15 per cent during June, July and August compared to the previous three-month period.

"Setbacks in the levels and nature of violence in Iraq affect all other measures of stability, reconstruction and transition," said the report. "Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq. Nevertheless the current violence is not civil war and movement toward a civil war can be prevented."

Optimism among ordinary Iraqis, however, has declined, the report said.

When asked if they believe "things will be better" in the future, the percentage responding positively dropped over the past year — whether they were asked to look ahead six months, one year or five years, polls show.

In Iraq yesterday, a mortar attack on an open-air market in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, killed three people and wounded 12. Gunmen also fatally shot two policemen, and police said they found the body of a kidnapped Saddam-era intelligence officer. Security operations will be expanded into eastern Baghdad, the defence ministry said yesterday, a day after co-ordinated attacks in the area killed 64 people and wounded 286.

COX NEWSPAPERS, with files from Associated press