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Dozens Killed after Baghdad Lifts Curfew    [

    Sunni-Shia Schism 'Threatening to Tear Iraq Apart,' Says Conflict Group
    By Michael Howard
    The Guardian UK

    Monday 27 February 2006

Samarra bombing exposes widening religious gaps. Bush calls on party leaders to unite against violence.

    Iraq is on the verge of breaking up along religious, ethnic and tribal lines - a process bloodily amplified by the Shia versus Sunni violence in the wake of last week's bomb attack on the gold-domed shrine in Samarra, the International Crisis Group says in a report out today.

    The conflict resolution organisation warns that, left unchecked, the widening fissures in Iraqi society that have been exposed since the removal of the Ba'athist regime in 2003 could bring further "instability and violence to many areas, especially those with mixed populations".

    The most pressing problem is the Sunni-Shia schism which "threatens to tear the country apart" says the report, entitled The Next Iraqi War? It urges Iraqi leaders and the international community to take immediate action to prevent the conflict from escalating into a civil war that could cause Iraq's disintegration and spread chaos through the region.

    But it also calls for the international community, including Iraq's neighbours, to start preparing for the "regrettable" scenario in which the country falls apart.

    "Until now, such an effort has been a taboo, but failure to anticipate such a possibility may lead to further disasters in the future," the ICG warns.

    Five days of violence in the wake of the Samarra bombing, have left more than 200 dead and many mosques smashed, despite daytime curfews on Baghdad and surrounding provinces.

    There were further ominous signs of the "cleansing" of once mixed neighbourhoods in and around Baghdad. Scores of Shia families were reported to have fled homes in the restive western Sunni suburb of Abu Ghraib. Shia community leaders said they were being housed temporarily in schools and other buildings in Shia areas. In the latest round of attacks, a bomb destroyed a minibus as it was leaving a bus station in the mostly Shia town of Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad, killing five people and wounding three.

    In Baghdad at least 18 people were killed and more than 50 injured when mortar rounds slammed into houses in two mainly Shia neighbourhoods. Also, two US soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb. Iraq's political leadership staged a show of unity by appearing on TV on Saturday night.

    The prime minster Ibrahim al Jaafari said that all or most of the leaders "expressed the importance of accelerating the political process without any delay". Sunni leaders who pulled out of talks to form a national unity government hinted they may soon rejoin the process.

    Earlier, President Bush had called seven party leaders urging them to "continue to work together to thwart the efforts of the perpetrators of the violence to sow discord", said a White House spokesman.

    Joost Hiltermann, the director of the ICG's Middle East Project, denied the prognosis was overly gloomy. "It is true I am pessimistic," he said. "But there are still some restraints in place and steps that could work and we could yet see Iraq through the worst of the crisis."

    He said it was encouraging that Shia and Sunni religious leaders had called for unity and calm. "Also ordinary Iraqis seem to have no desire for either a civil war or the break up of their country," he said.

    ICG Proposals

• The winners of the December elections, the Shia and Kurdish blocs, to establish a government of national unity in which Sunni Arab leaders are given more than a token role
  
  
• The new government to focus on jobs, basic services, security and disbanding the militias that have caused much of the destabilisation
  
  
• Changes to be made to the constitution to ease Sunni concerns, including a revision of key articles concerning the nature of federalism - excepting the Kurdish areas - and the distribution of oil revenues
  
  
• Donors to promote non-sectarian institution building by allocating funds to projects that embrace inclusiveness and transparency
  
  
• The US to state its intention to withdraw all its troops from Iraq
  
  
• Planning for the contingency that Iraq will fall apart

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    Dozens Killed after Baghdad Lifts Curfew
    By Sameer Yacoub
    The Independent UK

    Monday 27 February 2006

    Mortars slammed into crowded Baghdad neighbourhoods, killing 18 people and injuring dozens, as security measures were eased in the capital after the bombing of a revered Shia shrine and a wave of bloody sectarian violence.

    At least nine others victims, including two teenage boys playing football in Baqouba, were killed in other attacks yesterday.

    A 24-hour transport ban remained in effect in Baghdad and its suburbs as authorities tried to halt the violence that has claimed nearly 200 lives since the Shia Askariya shrine was destroyed in Samarra on Wednesday. But traffic restrictions were lifted in the strife-prone provinces of Diyala, Babil and Salahuddin, where the shrine was located.

    At least seven mortar rounds hit in a Shia enclave of Dora, a predominantly Sunni Arab district and one of the most dangerous parts of the city. Eighteen people were reported killed and at least 45 injured.

    Britain's former ambassador to Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, warned that the country was slipping into a state of low-level civil war, with the conflict pitting rival ethnic and religious groups against each other. The sectarian fighting, he said, bore a resemblance to ethnic cleansing in some parts of the country.

    "One could almost call it a low-level civil war already," Sir Jeremy told the Jonathan Dimbleby programme on ITV1.

    Although he did not believe that a "classic civil war" would follow, he said he feared local communities would look to militias for protection, ignoring the central authorities.

    "The unity of the country, the forward progress of the country would be lost," Sir Jeremy said. "There are elements of ethnic cleansing, getting a minority community out of an area so that the majority community can take over, in certain parts of Iraq."

    As night fell, there were more explosions in Baghdad. The two teenagers died when gunmen stepped from a car and fired on them in a Shia-Sunni mixed neighbourhood northeast of the capital. Another group of football players found three bodies in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. The victims had been handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head and chest, according to police.

    President George Bush spoke with seven leaders of Shia, Sunni Arab and Kurdish political parties on Saturday in an attempt to get a new government back on track.