Military officials are anxiously watching the brittle partnership between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq as U.S. analysts warn that renewed waves of violence have put the country at a crucial crossroads.
Sunni militants are widely thought responsible for twin bombings Wednesday that left 95 dead, the latest in a series of blasts. Eleven Iraqi security officials have been held for questioning in connection with the attacks, according to The Associated Press.
But a crucial question being debated in Washington is whether the larger Sunni community has begun implicitly supporting the attacks.
Military officers and analysts do not believe a new sectarian war has broken out. But the U.S. withdrawal from Iraqi cities has unnerved Sunnis who saw the U.S. presence as protection against Shiite oppression, and experts hope Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki finds a way to quickly calm Sunni fears.
“This is a very dangerous moment, and this thing could easily get out of hand,” said Stephen Biddle, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations.
American officials and analysts are worried that continued strife could further strain ethnic and religious relations.
U.S. options are limited because the al-Maliki government is considered opposed to allowing American troops to return to high-profile patrols in urban areas.
Iraq’s sectarian war cooled in 2007 after Sunnis began to refuse to help militants.
“Now that we see this stuff happening again, I think there is a distinct possibility that Sunnis who refused to tolerate violence have decided to allow some of it again,” Biddle said.
An especially critical issue is al-Maliki’s support for the U.S.-backed initiative known as the Sons of Iraq, an effort to organize former Sunni insurgents into local security forces, said military officials and analysts.
Members of the Sons of Iraq originally were on the U.S. payroll. The Iraqi government assumed responsibility for the 95,000 people in the program in April, slowly integrating them into its security forces and government.
But the Shiite-dominated government has long had misgivings about the program, worried it was a way of arming and paying former insurgents and members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party.
Nonetheless, 13,000 members of the Sons of Iraq so far have been made part of the Iraqi security forces. Another 3,300 have been given positions in other government ministries.
American military officials in Baghdad consider the program to be on sound footing, but sectarian divisions remain.
“It would be nice to think that they would integrate completely and they would move forward without tension and pressure, but I do not know if that is possible,” said a military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Some analysts said al-Maliki’s hesitation to more quickly integrate members of the Sons of the Iraq could lead to frustrated Sunnis returning to the insurgency.
Al-Maliki has been supportive of the program, especially in rural areas where Sunnis are organized more along tribal lines, some analysts said. But he is considered more skeptical about Sunni members in urban places, where the insurgency was more violent and politically organized.
“Maliki’s reluctance to integrate the Sons of Iraq in Diyala has been noticeable,” said Kimberly Kagan, a frequent adviser to military commanders in Iraq and the founder of the Institute for the Study of War.
But Kagan and her husband, Frederick Kagan, of the American Enterprise Institute, said that even as al-Maliki has squared off against Sunnis in Diyala, he has offered a political alliance to other members of the sect.
“Maliki is actively courting Sunni political leaders,” Frederick Kagan said.
But Biddle sees deeper tensions in the bombings: “I look at these bombings and one distinct possibility is that the Sunni community is signaling Maliki that their interests have to be respected and there are costs to running roughshod over Sunnis,” he said.
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jbarnes@tribune.com
