WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- The United States is fighting "a new kind of war" in Iraq involving a fragmented country, a leading U.S. analyst warned Thursday
"The problem is not total U.S. force levels or the security of Baghdad. It is the ability to reverse the current drift toward a major civil war and separation of the country by finding a new approach to U.S. intervention in Iraq," Anthony H. Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh H,. Burke chair in strategy at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a new analysis entitled "Understanding the Tests a New U.S. Strategy in Iraq Must Meet" published Thursday.
Cordesman described the conflict currently developing in Iraq as "a new kind of war that goes beyond insurrection, militias, and U.S. surges."
U.S. policymakers must face the fact that their armed forces in Iraq are "now fighting a new kind of war," Cordesman wrote.
"The 'threat' from the insurgency and militias is only part of the problem," he wrote. "Iraq's central government is weak and divided and the nation is steadily dividing into sectarian and ethnically controlled areas."
These different militias are already fighting for sectarian and ethnic space and influence, Cordesman wrote.
"This division affects (Iraq's) cities, as well as areas in its provinces, and most of the major ministries in its government," he wrote. "It often is reshaping neighborhoods, village, and towns, or rural and tribal areas in ways that are so complex that they are difficult or impossible to map."
The new splintering of Iraq "is creating growing problems in many Iraqi military units, regardless of their warfighting capability. It is a major problem in the Iraqi national and regular police, the facilities protection services, and virtually every element of civil government and the courts," Cordesman wrote.
