I’m going to run against the conventional wisdom on this one. Iraq is not in the midst of a civil war. “Sectarian violence” doesn’t describe it well, either. I’m not sure that there is a good term for it, to tell the truth.
Iraq would be in the midst of a civil war were it not for the presence of foreign troops. US air superiority makes it impossible for the warring factions to mass troops into conventional military units. Even were that not the case, the destruction of Iraqi armor and artillery during the invasion and the concentration of the population in urban centers lends itself to small units of irregulars. Our presence also prevents the direct involvement of neighboring countries and keeps the flow of men and materiel to a trickle. Moreover, having to sneak around the American presence makes it possible for small factions to survive, when otherwise they would be destroyed by their enemies or absorbed into larger factions.
The end result of all this is a novel form of modern warfare, the guerilla civil war.
None of this is an argument for staying. The simmering conflict in Iraq, and the general dislike of the occupiers by Iraqis of all stripes means that we will not be able to restore civil order or basic services or to rebuild the Iraqi economy — all of which are prerequisites to a peace that is now unattainable. They will bleed us (and each other) until we leave, and then a more conventional civil war will not only be possible but inevitable.
The best we can hope for, I suspect, is that we can get the hell out and that Iraq will end up partitioned into Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish states, with Iran as the major regional power and renewed unrest in the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iran. For a variety of reasons, I don’t think we’ll get that lucky, if you can call that luck.
But a civil war it is not. Not yet.
