F Center for Strategic and International Studies Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy 1800 K Street, N.W. • Suite 400 • Washington, DC 20006 Phone: 1 (202) 775 -3270 • Fax: 1 (202) 457 -8746 Email:
[email protected] Iraq’s Sectarian and Ethnic Violence and the Evolving Insurgency Developments through late -January 2007 Anthony H. Cordesman Arleigh A. Burke Chai r in Strategy
[email protected] With the Assistance of Emma Davies Updated: January 26, 2007 Cordesman: Iraq’s Sectarian and Ethnic Violence 1/26/07 Page 2 Executive Summary The insurgency in Iraq has become a “war after the war” that threa tens to divide the country and create a full -scale civil conflict. It has triggered sectarian and ethnic violence that dominates the struggle to reshape Iraq as a modern state, has emerged as a growing threat to the Gulf region, and has become linked to th e broader struggle between Sunni and Shi’ite Islamist extremism, and moderation and reform, throughout the Islamic world. Since its inception in the spring of 2003, the nature of the fighting in Iraq has evolved from a struggle between Coalition forces and former regime loyalists to a much more diffuse conflict, involving a number of Sunni groups, Shi’ite militias, and foreign jihadists, and which has spread to become a widespread civil conflict. In the process, the complex patterns of conflict in Iraq ha ve become a broad struggle for sectarian and ethnic control of political and economic space. Open violence has become steadily more serious, but it is only part of the story.