Is civil war under way in Iraq?

BAGHDAD, Iraq —

Fourteen members of a Shiite Muslim family are slaughtered in their home. Days later, masked gunmen invade a Sunni household, killing five people. Organized political killing proceeds, as if there had not been elections two weeks ago.

In a speech delivered as Iraqis prepared to go to the polls, President Bush said he didn't believe a civil war would break out. But some observers believe it has begun — a quiet and deadly struggle whose battle lines were thrown into sharp relief by the highly polarized results of that vote.

On any given day, a group of Shiite police officers might be hit with a Sunni suicide attack or ambush. A militiaman in the Shiite-dominated Iraqi security services might arrest, torture and kill a suspected Sunni insurgent. Or a Kurdish official in the new government might be gunned down between home and office.

Unless the assassination target is prominent, or the number of victims rises to at least the high single digits, such events barely rate a mention in Western news reports. Yet the most reliable estimates are that about 1,000 Iraqis have been dying each month, most of them killed by fellow Iraqis.

The term "civil war" conjures images of armies massed against each other, and ultimately the breakup of a state — a far cry from the democratic paradigm the U.S. government meant to achieve in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein 2 ½ years ago.

Iraqi politicians and leaders routinely extol the country's unity and its aversion to civil war. Last week, Abbas Bayati, an official of the Shiite-based Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and a key member of the United Iraqi Alliance election slate, said it would never happen because the country's religious leaders would not permit a full-fledged ethnic and sectarian war.

One former middle-ranked government official, asking not to be named, said he had been forced to abandon his former Baghdad neighborhood because of his Shiite name and now hides his identity for reasons of safety when he travels between the capital and his home village near Babylon.

"You cannot drive in the south bearing a Sunni name. You cannot go to Anbar [province] with a Shiite name," he said. "There is not a civil war across the whole country, but there are civil wars in at least 20 towns — low-intensity civil war."

Since the summer of 2003, mosques have been bombed and rocketed, people kidnapped and hitherto mixed Baghdad districts such as Ghazaliyah and Doura slowly and inexorably "cleansed" of Shiites through intimidation and violence. Similar pressures have been put on Sunnis in villages in the Shiite-dominated south or on Arabs and Turkmen in the northern city of Kirkuk, which the country's Kurdish parties claim for their autonomous region.

In a grisly example of the violence last week, 14 members of a Shiite family who had been warned to leave their mostly Sunni neighborhood were slain in their home in a mixed area just south of Baghdad that has become known as the "triangle of death."

Already, the fighting in Iraq amounts to an unconventional civil war, said James Dobbins, an analyst at the Rand Corp. think tank in Washington, D.C. He said only one side in the conflict — the Iraqi government aided by its U.S. and British allies — possesses heavy weapons, while the other side falls back on guerrilla tactics. But he too sees a danger that it could escalate.

"You could have a civil war of the sort that they had in Yugoslavia in the '90s, in which both sides had heavy weaponry and the casualties were much, much higher."

In fact, he said, "The main argument for America continuing to stay in Iraq and exercise influence is to prevent the situation from degenerating that way. But it is going to be difficult, costly and time-consuming."

Rosemary Hollis, one of the authors of a September 2004 report by the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London, said one scenario "is that it doesn't fall apart but the tremendous amount of internal tensions kind of cancel each other out." Rivalries within the Shiite community, for instance, could keep their struggles localized and prevent them from acting directly against other communities, she said.

Although still not finalized, the leaked election results from the December voting for a National Assembly seem to point to the emergence of a Parliament heavy on religion-based parties from both the Shiite and Sunni Arab communities. Faring poorly were parties with a secular bent, and those seeking to transcend sectarian or ethnic divides.

Disappointed secular and Sunni groups immediately charged vote-rigging and intimidation; several leading Sunni politicians felt aggrieved enough to question the legitimacy of the vote itself, asking that it be held again. The winning Shiite alliance has refused, however, and Sunni and Kurdish political leaders are working to see if a national unity government can be formed that would satisfy, or at least mollify, the losers.

"The Shiites insist on their demands, and the Sunni and the Arab nationalists remain feeling marginalized and isolated or ignored and this and that, so I think there will be big problems and violence will continue" for the next two or three years, said Yunadim Kana, a Christian politician.

"Will there be a civil war? I don't think it will reach that point," he said, but added that no one could be sure. "Every time in Iraq there is A plus B that should equal C, but then something else happens."

Wamid Nahdmi, one of Iraq's more thoughtful political analysts, said he is pleased that the nightmare scenario has not dawned.

"Now there are indications that the country is being gradually pulled into some sort of a sectarian conflict, because there are reports that some Shia personnel on the one hand and some Sunni personnel on the other are getting killed. But up to now it seems to me that this is the action of small groups," he said. "It is more of an organized Mafia rather than mass spontaneous activities."

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's leading Shiite cleric, has been a consistent voice to moderate tensions between Sunnis and Shiites since the U.S.-led invasion, and continues to try to tamp down divisions. Last month, he endorsed a unity government that would include Sunnis.

Bayati, of the United Iraqi Alliance, says such enlightened thinking will keep the lid on. "Political tension by itself cannot lead to civil war," he said. "Sectarianism is the one possible cause. ... But the position of the leadership has pulled the rug out from under this proposition."

Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor with a close interest in Iraq, warns against concluding that because Iraq is already in the midst of a civil war, it does not matter if U.S. troops remain or leave.

Recalling the 1975-90 bloodletting in Lebanon, he says he can imagine the situation in Iraq becoming far worse if U.S. forces leave or are drawn down significantly. With a weaker U.S. presence, brought on by an eroding support for the war in the United States, the neighborhood militias that have formed would be emboldened to come into the open, perhaps staging organized attacks against neighboring towns or the central government in Baghdad.

Another flash point would be Kirkuk. In all probability, Kurds would seek a referendum to attach the disputed city to their regional federation, he said. "Are the Turkmen going to lie down and take it? Or the Arabs there as well? My guess is no," Cole said.

Sunni Arabs, long accustomed to running Iraq and now threatened by the prospect of being cut off from the country's petroleum revenues as Shiite and Kurdish regions take the oil proceeds for themselves, also would have motivation to rebel.

"They can see the writing on the wall," Cole said of the Sunnis.

And in any generalized civil war that erupts, he warned, Iraq's neighbors very likely would be drawn in as well, shifting the so-called "tectonic plates" of regional stability. Turkey could seek to prevent the Turkmen minority from being overwhelmed in Kirkuk. The gulf states would want to aid Sunnis, while Iran would intervene on the side of Shiites.

Like Cole, James Fearon, a Stanford University political scientist and an authority on modern conflicts, believes that the U.S. forces leaving too quickly would be the catalyst to widening the civil war.

As things stand now, Fearon said, "There is no real nice exit for the U.S."

Asmaa Waguih of the Los Angeles Times' Baghdad bureau, and staff writers Raheem Salman in Baghdad and Janet Stobart in London contributed to this report.