Civil war in Iraq has already begun

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-civil-war-in-iraq-has-already-begun-politician-claims-conflict-has-started-and-warns-it-will-be-worse-than-syria-8601732.html?printService=print




'The civil war in Iraq has already begun': Politician claims conflict has started and warns it will be ‘worse than Syria’




Patrick Cockburn




Thursday, 2 May 2013


Iraqi leaders fear that the country is sliding rapidly into a new
civil war which “will be worse than Syria”. Baghdad residents are
stocking up on rice, vegetables and other foodstuffs in case they are
prevented from getting to the shops by fighting or curfews. “It is wrong
to say we are getting close to a civil war,” said a senior Iraqi
politician. “The civil war has already started.”






This is borne out by the sharp rise in the number of people killed in
political violence in Iraq in April, with the UN claiming more than 700
people were killed last month, the highest monthly total for five
years.
The situation has suddenly deteriorated since the killing
of at least 36 Sunni Arab protesters at a sit-in in Hawijah on 23 April.
An observer in Baghdad, who did not want to be named, said “ever since,
Hawijah people are frightened of a return to the massacres of 2006”.
She added that Sunni and Shia were avoiding going into each others’
areas. Signs of deteriorating security are everywhere. Al-Qa’ida showed
its reach on Monday when five car bombs blew up in overwhelmingly Shia
southern Iraq, leaving 21 dead. The Sunni fundamentalist group, which
had a resurgence in 2012, is responsible for killing a majority of the
almost 1,500 Iraqis who have died in political violence so far this
year.
Its members are now able to roam freely in Anbar province
where a year ago they were a secretive underground movement. In
neighbouring Kirkuk, al-Qa’ida last week seized the town of Sulaiman
Bec, shot the chief of police, stormed the police station and departed
with their weapons after agreeing a truce with the Iraqi army.
Residents
in Baghdad say that soldiers, whom they claim are Shia militiamen in
uniform, have massed around Sunni enclaves in the city and are setting
up checkpoints. Memories of the sectarian civil war in 2006 and 2007
when, in the worst months, some 3,000 people were butchered, may be
exacerbating the sense of threat, but old fears are reawakening. Bombs
have usually been directed against Shia in the past, but in recent weeks
Sunni mosques and cafés are being targeted. “Before we could escape to
Syria, but with the violence there where can we go?” asked one Iraqi.
“There is no way out.”
The government of Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki is floundering in its response. In dealing with the
four-month-old protest movement by the Sunni Arabs, a fifth of Iraq’s
population, who say they are treated as second-class citizens, he varies
between denouncing them as terrorists and admitting that they have real
grievances. The government has closed the main road from Iraq to
Jordan, which the Sunni say is a collective punishment for their
community. Overall, Mr Maliki has badly miscalculated in believing that,
if he played for time, the Sunni protests would die away and he could
divide the Sunni leadership with promises of money and jobs.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-civil-war-in-iraq-has-already-begun-politician-claims-conflict-has-started-and-warns-it-will-be-worse-than-syria-8601732.html