On the verge of civil war

Just as the people who attacked the Golden Mosque intended, the situation in Iraq seems to be deteriorating by the minute:

Sectarian violence claimed more than 130 lives across Iraq yesterday despite calls for calm from leaders fearful of all-out civil war.

A day after a suspected al-Qa'eda bomb destroyed a major Shia shrine, leave was cancelled for the police and army. Minority Sunni political leaders pulled out of US-backed talks on forming a national unity government, accusing the ruling Shias of fomenting dozens of attacks on Sunni mosques.

The attacks showed a precision and brutality exceptional even in Iraq. At a makeshift checkpoint outside Baghdad, gunmen dragged drivers from their cars to be shot. In all, 47 bodies - all Shias who had been demonstrating against Wednesday's bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarrah - were found in a ditch near the village of Nahrawan.
[...]
Sectarian killings are not new following the American-led invasion but what is happening now appears unprecedented in its scale and systematic nature.

One driver, Hussein Ali, told how he had been stopped by gunmen at a checkpoint in Baghdad and asked if he was Shia or Sunni. He was Shia so allowed to go on.

Nearby, a 55-year-old Sunni woman was killed when gunmen descended on her home. Neighbours begged the men to spare her but she was shot three times in the head after they pronounced her "a Sunni from Samarrah".

Moqtada al-Sadr, the militant cleric whose black-shirted Mahdi army has been the most prominent of all the Shia armed groups warned that the government and US had failed to protect the Samarrah shrine and ordered his followers to defend all Shia holy sites.

This is a growing catastrophe not just for the ordinary people of Iraq, or the American and coalition troops stationed in the country, but also for democratic activists elsewhere in the Middle East. Sectarian conflict in Iraq is a gift to tyrants like Assad, Mubarak and the House of Saud, who get to argue that a "strong leader" is needed to keep their respective countries united.

Iraqi blogger Zeyad has reports directly from the scene, as do Mohammed and Omar from Iraq the Model. I hope to God they all stay safe.

Posted by damian at February 24, 2006 07:30 AM | TrackBack