Is civil war in Iraq inevitable? [View All]

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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7964129.htm

Even before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last March, some Western and Arab scholars predicted the country would plunge into civil war as soon as Saddam's totalitarian rule collapsed.

So far, many Iraqis insist they are determined to keep the peace, saying their nation is already worn down by three devastating wars since 1980, decades of dictatorship and nearly 13 years of crippling U.N. sanctions.

"We never fought each other," said Hamid al-Kafaai, spokesman for Iraq's Governing Council. "We are one nation and we will stay united."

However, unity has always proven difficult in Iraq, cobbled together from three separate Ottoman provinces by colonial Britain after World War I.

Saddam's Baath party held the rival clans, tribes, ethnic groups and religious communities together through a mixture of terror against its domestic enemies and patronage to those who remained loyal.

That formula held the nation together after Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War after Shiites and Kurds rose up, only to be crushed by Saddam's forces.

With Saddam gone, signs of social disintegration are emerging. The Shiites and Kurds believe they now have a historical opportunity to regain their rights - to the alarm of the Sunni Arabs.

Majority Shiites expect to translate their numbers - an estimated 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people - into real political power.