Gates of hell are open

The threat of a large-scale civil war in Iraq is imminent,

reports Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov

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February 25, 2006

IN a land of daily bloodshed and bombings, it took another explosion this week to hammer home what many in Iraq and among its Arab neighbours have already accepted: a civil war is already being fought in the nation the US liberated.

It was an audacious attack even by the brutal standards of the new Iraq. When the giant dome of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, the holiest Shia shrine in the country, fell just before 7am on Wednesday, the inter-Islamic battles of the past 12 months reached a new nadir.

The toppling of a sacred site urged into the open the Shia fighters who had previously battled the Sunni uprising in the back lanes of towns and villages.

The Shias now have a lightning rod to make their rebellion public. The gates of hell, slightly ajar for a year, have been flung wide open.

Since at least March 2005, a secret campaign has been fought in communities that co-existed for more than 30 years under the iron fist of Saddam Hussein. Sectarian killings have been commonplace - a dozen Shia Muslims one day, about as many Sunnis the next.

Just as had happened across the global ethnic killing fields of the past three decades; Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Lebanon and Kosovo, the bodies were strewn where they fell, their homes and villages seized by those who slayed them.

When the dictator Saddam strode the land, the Sunni minority walked with him, enjoying power and spoils that far outweighed their numbers. The Shias of Iraq, by far the largest ethnic group, mostly stayed silent, waiting for their turn to wield the levers of power - which was finally delivered to them in December.

It is now high noon for the Shias who, within weeks, will dominate the new Government legitimised by the December 15 election, which realigned Iraq along traditional sectarian lines. Shia parties won 128 of 275 seats, while the ruling Sunnis were relegated to third in the pecking order, behind the Shias and the second largest ethnic bloc, the Kurds of the north.

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