WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- When is a civil war officially declared a civil war? At what point in a conflict does sectarian fighting, car bombing, kidnapping and random acts of inter-communal violence officially get awarded the designation of civil war?
The fighting in Iraq has been going on for close to three years now, and with every escalation in violence people start to shout: "It's going to turn into a civil war." And yet...
And yet Wednesday, a group of masked and armed men jumped out of two cars, burst into one of the holiest Shiite mosques -- the 1,200-year-old Askariya shrine in Samarra -- and proceeded to kill the four or five guards who had just returned from morning prayers. The group then proceeded to place explosives around the mosque's golden dome before detonating their bombs and in the process destroying the historic edifice and killing scores of people.
In sectarian clashes that erupted in the aftermath of the attack, as news of the raid on the mosque began to spread, more than 130 people were killed as Sunnis seeking revenge attacked Shiite mosques and vice-versa, continuing the eternal cycle of violence. Before long, people lost track of who or what instigated the initial act of violence, but at this point it doesn't matter any longer. Hate begins to feed on itself.
North of Baghdad 19 people, 11 of them civilians, died in two bombings. The U.S. military said four soldiers from the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, were killed when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb near Hawijah. This brings the total number of Americans killed as of Feb. 23 to 2,290.
In Julula, 75 miles northeast of Baghdad, a car exploded killing three civilians and injuring three others, according to police sources and news reports.
So is that the civil war? Ever since U.S. and coalition forces first entered Baghdad a few weeks under three years ago next month, politicians, journalists, and experts have been predicting that civil war in Iraq is imminent. Is this it? Is this the civil war?
"Not yet," A. Heather Coyne, senior program officer for the Center for Mediation and Conflict Resolution at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, told United Press International.
"However bad things are in Iraq, it's not there yet," said Coyne. "What's kept us from civil war is the restraint of the Shiite leadership. It would be a nightmare if they were to take off the gloves and let loose."
Yet the nightmare is already there for many Iraqis, civil war, or not. Following the bombing of the sacred mosque, unidentified gunmen shot dead 47 workers traveling on a bus and dumped their bodies in a ditch near Baghdad Thursday, as militia battles and sectarian reprisals broke out.
Sunni officials said 168 of their mosques had been attacked, 10 imams killed and 15 kidnapped in the hours following the raid on the Askariya shrine.
Among those killed in the violence which followed Wednesday's attack in Samarra were three journalists working for al-Arabiya television whose bodies were found on the outskirts of the city. Al-Arabiya, based in Dubai, is seen as supportive of U.S. policies in the region.
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, convened political leaders to a meeting Thursday, but the largest Sunni faction in the newly elected parliament, the Iraqi Accordance Front, boycotted the meeting. Talabani told reporters that the best way to avoid escalating the conflict was to form a government of national unity. Something he has not yet been able to accomplish.
So why is this not a civil war, yet?
"Political calculation among the Shiites," said Coyne. "They are getting what they want. They're winning, and they are the majority, and they probably can get more this way."
Furthermore, says Coyne: "They still have control over the militias. It would be very scary to me to see competition between the militias."
If that explains what is keeping the Shiites out of launching a full-fledged civil war, what's restraining the Sunnis?
"I think there are a lot of divisions among the Sunnis," says the expert from USIP. "If you are in a full scale civil war with the majority you are going to lose."
And what about the other group? The instigators? The terrorists? Al-Qaida? Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group?
"There is another group," admits Coyne. She calls them "the foreign fighter element." "There are certainly enough boilers in that group," she told UPI.
But, she explains, that what helped keep the civil war at bay is that the Shiite leadership and the religious leadership have both condemned the attack. "So far, they have been able to channel the fury against the terrorists."
Indeed, that tactic may have been successful, this time, but what about the next, or the one after? How long can this civil war that is not a civil war last before it becomes a civil war?
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(Comments may be sent to Claude@upi.)
