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No More Illusions Americans used to dream of building a strong, unified, pluralistic Iraq. Now the possibilities are a very loose federation, or violent disintegra tion. Sharp plits: Armed followers of Muqtada al-Sadr Samir Mizban / AP Sharp plits: Armed followers of Muqtada al-Sadr By By Scott Johnson, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Michael Hastings Newsweek Oct. Customers came for friendly service and the ease of buying rice, t ea or cigarettes a few blocks from home. Abu Sajad, a 44-year-old with s alt-and-pepper hair, would even let regulars-Sunnis, Shiites or Christia ns-run up a tab. But not long ago, Abu Sajad was found in a pool of his own blood. Shortly afterward, his widow and four children left for Karbala, a Shiite town in the south. His brother, Abu Naseer, decided to move to Al Kurayat, a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. The Doura shop was closed, another debris-strewn relic of an Iraq that may no longer exist . "I have no reason or explanation why he was killed except that he was Shiite," says his brother. Across the country many Iraqis have begun to fear the worst: that their s ociety is breaking apart from within. "The vast majority of the populati on is resisting calls to take up arms against other ethnic and religious groups," said a senior Bush administration official whose portfolio inc ludes Iraq but who is not authorized to speak on the record.
Sunni insurgents, trying to prev ent political dominance by the Shiite majority, are killing them in grea t numbers. Now many ordin ary citizens who are caught in the middle aren't waiting to become victi ms. They're moving to safer areas, creating trickles of internal refugee s "There is an undeclared civil war," Hussein Ali Kamal, head of intell igence at the Ministry of Interior, told NEWSWEEK. The outcome of these conflicts-and Iraq's future as a unified state-may w ell be riding on a critical nationwide vote planned for next week. Iraqi s will decide, in a US-orchestrated referendum on Oct. Yet many worry that even if the constitution passes as Washington hopes, it will only worsen the disintegration underway. Key provisions allow for separate regions to control water and new oil wells, dictate t ax policy and oversee "internal security forces"-to become autonomous, i n effect. George Casey, commander of Coalition forces in Iraq, said the US occupation may have to continue longer because the draft constitut ion "didn't come out as the national compact that we thought it was goin g to be." Others say Iraq can exist, even thrive, under such a loose federalist sys tem. What is not in dispute is that at the most basic level-of neighborh oods and communities-the tissue of Iraqi society is already rupturing. I t's not just Shia who are displacing themselves to be among their own ki nd, though they are the main victims of the Sunni-led insurgents. Many S unnis, terrified of death squads and Shia-dominated police who look the other way, are fleeing Shia areas even if they don't support the insurge ncy. Dozens of Sunni families left Basra in the past year, fearing attac ks from Shiite militias that dominate that southern city. "For a Sunni f amily like mine that was swimming in a lagoon of Shiites, it was almost impossible to continue living in Basra," said one refugee, Abu Mishal. M ahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the National Assembly, concurs: "We n ever had this even under Saddam ... For many Iraqis, the only sense of security they can find after two and a half years of chaos is in the bosom of their sect or tribe. One central government after another in Baghdad has failed to establish order. Afte r two years of training, the new Iraqi Army has but one fully independen t battalion-about 500 men-CENTCOM Commander Gen. So, not surprisingly, militias and warlords have begun to take over and tend to their own.
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