Renewed violence in Iraq

A wave of deadly bombings threatened to unleash a new sectarian civil war in Iraq this week, as the country’s Shiite-led government cracked down on a growing Sunni rebellion. Tit-for-tat attacks have targeted Sunni mosques and Shiite neighborhoods, pushing the death toll to nearly 1,000 people over the past two months. Sunnis have accused Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of targeting their community with arrests and spurious terrorism charges. Al-Maliki last week ordered the Iraqi army to suppress Sunni militant groups operating near the border with neighboring Syria, amid concerns that the increasingly sectarian civil war there could spill into Iraq.

Since U.S. troops left, tensions in Iraq have been “overheating,” said Ramzy Mardini in ForeignPolicy.com. Now the fighting in Syria has become an accelerant, speeding the country toward all-out civil war. Al-Maliki rightly fears that if Sunni rebels in Syria oust President Bashar al-Assad, they could partner with Sunnis in Iraq to create a “transnational sectarian cause aimed at removing Shiites from power,” including in Baghdad.

Iraq isn’t on the brink yet, said Shashank Joshi in CNN.com. The Iraqi state is much stronger than in the darkest days of the insurgency, and many Sunni groups appear “eager to keep the violence in check.” So too are Iraq’s political elites, said Dan Murphy in CSMonitor.com. “Both Shiite and Sunni political leaders have profited handsomely from high oil prices in recent years,” and they want to protect those gains.

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The real driver of Iraq’s violence is “Baghdad’s over-centralization of power,” said Michael Knights in ForeignPolicy.com. Al-Maliki and his inner circle have essentially rebuilt “a version of the authoritarian system [they] sought for decades to overthrow.” Unless they relax their iron grip on the military, the economy, and the judiciary, and agree to share power with the provinces, the country will splinter violently. “Loosening the ties that bind Iraq together is a risk, but holding too tightly is the greater danger.”