Analysis: What 'Civil War' Means for Iraq
Council on Foreign Relations
December 1, 2006
Prepared by: Lionel Beehner
The current debate over how to label the bloodshed in Iraq—set off by a number of news outlets’ decisions to describe it as a “civil war”—is nothing new. John F. Burns wrote in the New York Times back in July 2005 of violence “ever more centered on sectarian killings, with Sunni insurgents targeting hundreds of Shiite and Kurdish civilians” and reports of Shiite death squads “retaliating by abducting and killing Sunni clerics and community leaders.”
In September of last year, CFR.org asked a number of experts whether Iraq qualified as a civil war. Most responded that it was approaching one. Violence in the country has since taken on a new ferocity and an intensified sectarian nature, as the number of bodies in Baghdad’s morgue pile up. Also, defeatism has set in among some officials, both American and Iraqi, which stands in marked contrast to the higher hopes last year at this time ahead of permanent elections.
But in Washington there remains little consensus (Newsweek) on what kind of war is underway in Iraq. White House officials say it is too fluid and amorphous to be a civil war. After all, there is still an insurgency raging; Shiites are feuding among themselves in southern Iraq; and Sunnis hardly constitute a unified camp. Most civil wars, moreover, are ideological in nature, not sectarian, historians say. Domestic politics also plays an important role. Donald Kagan of Yale University says use of the term “civil war” is a ploy (PBS) by those favoring a U.S. pullout from Iraq.
Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.
Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.
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