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The battle between Sunni and Shia Muslims
for control of Baghdad has already started, say Iraqi political
leaders who predict fierce street fighting will break out as
each community takes over districts in which it is strongest.
"The fighting will only
stop when a new balance of power has emerged," Fuad Hussein,
the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader, said.
"Sunni and Shia will each take control of their own area."
He said sectarian cleansing had already begun.
Many Iraqi leaders now believe
that civil war is inevitable but it will be confined, at least
at first, to the capital and surrounding provinces where the
population is mixed. "The real battle will be the battle
for Baghdad where the Shia have increasing control," said
one senior official who did not want his name published. "The
army will disintegrate in the first moments of the war because
the soldiers are loyal to the Shia, Sunni or Kurdish communities
and not to the government." He expected the Americans to
stay largely on the sidelines.
Throughout the capital, communities,
both Sunni and Shia, are on the move, fleeing districts where
they are in a minority and feel under threat. Sometimes they
fight back. In the mixed but majority Shia al-Amel district,
Sunni householders recently received envelopes containing a Kalashnikov bullet
and a letter telling them to get out at once. In this case they
contacted the insurgents who killed several Shia neighbours suspected
of sending the letters.
"The Sunni will fight
for Baghdad," said Mr Hussein. "The Baath party already
controls al-Dohra and other Sunni groups dominate Ghazaliyah
and Abu Ghraib [districts in south and west Baghdad]."
The Iraqi army is likely to
fall apart once inter-communal fighting begins. According to
Peter Galbraith, former US diplomat and expert on Iraq, the Iraqi
army last summer contained 60 Shia battalions, 45 Sunni battalions,
nine Kurdish battalions and one mixed battalion.
The police are even more divided
and in Baghdad are largely controlled by the Mehdi Army of the
radical nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Badr Organisation
that has largely been in control of the interior ministry since
last May. Sunni Arabs in Baghdad regard the ministry's paramilitary
police commanders as Shia death squads.
Mr Hussein gave another reason
why the army is weak. "Where you have 3,000 soldiers there
will in fact be only 2,000 men [because of ghost soldiers who
do not exist and whose salaries are taken by senior officers],"
he said. "When it comes to fighting only 500 of those men
will turn up."
Iraqi officials and ministers
are increasingly in despair at the failure to put together an
effective administration in Baghdad. A senior Arab minister,
who asked not to be named, said: "The government could end
up being only a few buildings in the Green Zone."
The mood among Iraqi leaders,
both Arabs and Kurds, is far gloomier in private than the public
declarations of the US and British governments. The US President
George W Bush called this week for a national unity government
in Iraq but Iraqi observers do not expect this to be any more
effective than the present government of Prime Minister Ibrahim
al-Jaafari. One said this week: "The real problem is that
the Shia and Sunni hate each other and not that we haven't been
able to form a government."
The Shia and Kurds will have
the advantage in the coming conflict because they have leaders
and organisations. The Sunni are divided and only about 30 per
cent of the population of the capital. Nevertheless they should
be able to hold on to their stronghold in west Baghdad and the
Adhamiyah district east of the Tigris. The Shia do not have the
strength and probably do not wish to take over the Sunni towns
and villages north and west of Baghdad.
Though the Kurds have long
sought autonomy close to quasi-independence, their leaders are
worried that civil war will increase Iranian and Turkish involvement
in Iraq. Mr Hussein said he feared that civil war in Baghdad
could spread north to Mosul and Kirkuk where the division is
between Kurd and Arab rather than Sunni and Shia.
Already Baghdad resembles Beirut
at the start of the Lebanese civil war in 1975, when Christians
and Muslims fought each other for control of the city.
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