US Military Predicts Surge in Violence in Iraq

The U.S. military on Nov. 28 predicted a surge in sectarian fighting in Iraq in the coming weeks -- tit-for-tat revenge killings triggered by last week’s devastating bombings in a Shiite stronghold in Baghdad.

But U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said the violence did not yet meet the military’s definition of civil war, despite what he called a "dramatic spike" in killings and "violence raging in Baghdad’s streets."

Some academics and commentators say the country is already in the midst of a sectarian war between majority Shiites, oppressed under Saddam Hussein but now politically dominant, and the former Iraqi leader’s fellow minority Sunnis.

The debate has become louder since last week’s car bombings in the Shiite slum of Sadr City, which killed more than 200 people in the worst attack since the U.S. invasion in 2003 and sparked revenge killings in Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Nov. 27 Iraq was close to civil war, but U.S. President George W. Bush sidestepped the politically sensitive issue in remarks on Nov. 28, accusing Sunni Islamist al-Qaida of fomenting violence.

Caldwell blamed al-Qaida for the Sadr City bombings, saying the militant group was trying to set Shiites and Sunnis at each other’s throats, weaken Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shi’ite-led government and cause general anarchy.

Violence has surged between the two rival sects, killing more than 100 people a day, the United Nations estimates, since the bombing of a Shiite shrine at Samarra in February.

"We expect to see elevated levels of violence in the next couple of weeks ... al-Qaida, foreign terrorists and extremists do not want to let Iraqis decide their own future," Caldwell told a briefing in Baghdad.

He said the military had already noted an increase in the number of mortar and rocket attacks between militant groups on both sides of the Tigris River, which cuts through Baghdad.

While 7,000 al-Qaida fighters had been killed or captured since October 2004, he said, they were "punching back" in Baghdad neighborhoods that had been cleared as part of Operation Together Forward, a major security crackdown that U.S. generals have called the defining battle of the war.

Caldwell also weighed into the debate on whether the mounting unrest constituted a civil war, saying the violence did not fit the military’s definition, which had three elements:

"The government is still functioning and we don’t see an organization trying to overthrow (it) and assume control ... We also see a security force that is responsive to the government."

The White House last week described the Sadr City bombings as an attempt to topple a democratically elected government, while many Sunnis accuse the security forces of being loyal to Shiite factions in government and of running death squads.