Knickmeyer in 'Wash Post': Iraq Already in Civil War

By: E&P Staff In a front-page article for today's Washington Post, longtime Baghdad correspondent Ellen Knickmeyer reports that while American commanders have suggested that civil war is "possible" in Iraq, "many leaders, experts and ordinary people in Baghdad and around the Middle East say it is already under way, and that the real worry ahead is that the conflict will destroy the flimsy Iraqi state and draw in surrounding countries.

"Whether the U.S. military departs Iraq sooner or later, the United States will be hard-pressed to leave behind a country that does not threaten U.S. interests and regional peace, according to U.S. and Arab analysts and political observers."

But as Iraq's neighbors "grapple with the various ideas put forward for solving the country's problems, they uniformly shudder at one proposal: dividing Iraq into separate regions for Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, and then speeding the withdrawal of U.S. forces," Knickmeyer relates.

Ten more American military personnel were killed over the past two days.

Between 2 percent and 5 percent of Iraq's 27 million people have been killed, wounded or uprooted since the Americans invaded in 2003, calculates Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for International and Strategic Studies. "This is civil war," he told Knickmeyer.

A new Gallup Poll released today found that Americans' concerns about Iraq had reached a record high level.

Knickmeyer writes: "Even outside the epicenter of sectarian strife in the central region of the country, Shiite factions battle each other in the south, Sunni tribes and factions clash in the west. Across Iraq, the criminal gangs that emerged with the collapse of law and order rule patches of turf as mini-warlords.

"Since the war began, 1.6 million Iraqis have sought refuge in neighboring countries; at least 231,530 people have been displaced inside Iraq since February, when Shiite-Sunni violence exploded with the bombing of a Shiite shrine in the northern city of Samarra, according to figures from the United Nations and the U.N.-affiliated International Organization for Migration."

The full article can be found here.

***

Related E&P Story:

-- Gallup: Americans' Concerns About Iraq Surge