Al Qaida’s return to Iraq

Iraq suffered its deadliest day in two years this week, as 40 coordinated attacks in 15 cities killed more than 100 people. Al Qaida in Iraq, a Sunni extremist group, claimed responsibility for the assaults, which targeted Shiites and government officials with car bombs and checkpoint ambushes, raising fears that militants were reigniting a sectarian war seven months after the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The wave of attacks came just days after al Qaida in Iraq’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, promised a new offensive and called on Sunnis to join the group’s cause.

This bloodshed is proof that the Iraqi government can’t govern, said The Peninsula (Qatar) in an editorial. Since U.S. troops left in December, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, has done little but aggravate sectarian rifts, targeting the Sunni community with arrests, including that of a prominent politician. He has also deepened the divide by sympathizing with the Assad regime in Syria, where predominantly Sunni rebels are fighting a government dominated by Alawites, who belong to a branch of Shiism.

“The U.S. abdication in Iraq” hasn’t helped matters, said The Wall Street Journal. The American presence induced al-Maliki to share power. But the White House made no serious effort to keep even a small number of troops there, so it could “point to a promise kept to the political Left” in the run-up to the election. Now the U.S. has “little leverage” as an “arc of instability” threatens to form through Syria and Iraq and into the Persian Gulf.

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Baghdad’s crucial test now is to re-establish security without overreacting, said Brian Katulis in CNN.com. This week’s attacks were clearly designed to provoke a government response, which militants hope will inflame sectarian tensions. Back in the bloodiest days of the insurgency, “it was reaction to terrorist attacks and not the initial attacks themselves” that did the greatest damage. The next few weeks could determine “whether or not Iraq slips into another civil war.”