Sectarian violence rocks Iraq

As political factions continue to haggle over forming Iraq’s new government, more than 100 Iraqis were killed and hundreds injured in a weeklong wave of violence. The attacks, which bear the earmarks of the Sunni insurgency group al Qaida in Iraq, stirred fears that Iraq was once again plunging into sectarian warfare. In one assault, insurgents wearing military uniforms rounded up members of the anti-insurgent Sunni Awakening and executed them and their families, killing 24. Car bombs targeted Baghdad apartment buildings and diplomatic facilities, including the Iranian Embassy.

The attacks come a month after Iraqi parliamentary elections, which gave opposition leader Ayad Allawi a narrow plurality, but left no bloc with a clear parliamentary majority. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has challenged the results. Allawi said al-Maliki’s intransigence has created a “power vacuum” that insurgents are exploiting. “Democracy is being raped in Iraq,” Allawi said.

The bloodshed is scarily reminiscent of the Iraq of five years ago, said Ivan Eland in The Providence Journal-Bulletin. Despite a “veneer” of reconciliation between ethnic and religious groups, Iraq remains a tribal society, and those divisions could widen, especially if Sunnis feel shut out of the new government. The latest election could be “as destabilizing as was the one in 2005.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The mounting lawlessness is President Obama’s gift to Iraq, said Frank Gaffney in The Washington Times. By announcing that the drawdown of American combat forces would be complete by August, Obama essentially sent the message that “those determined to use violence to destabilize the country, foment sectarian strife, and shape Iraq’s destiny can do so with impunity.”

Surveying today’s Iraq, said Andrew Sullivan in TheAtlantic.com, Americans have every right to wonder “if this is what they gave $1 trillion and thousands of lives and tens of thousands of casualties for.” Even if all-out warfare is averted, it seems we’ll be lucky to end up with “some kind of ramshackle, chaotic, and weak state, more sympathetic to Iran than Saddam would ever have been.”