A long-awaited report on Iraqi civilian deaths delivered somber but expected news this week: In the past year and half, 12,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by the insurgency. About 10,500 of the victims were Shiite Muslims – underscoring the sectarian nature of the violence and highlighting the risk that Iraq could be plunging toward full-fledged civil war.
The statistics, of course, belie the real horror encapsulated by each individual death. On Wednesday, for example, a mortar attack killed three young children as they played outside their home. On Friday, gunmen opened fire on a market area, massacring nine people. A suicide bomber on Thursday murdered 12 people at a restaurant. Indeed, the day was particularly grim, with 50 civilian deaths.
The mayhem occurred despite last week’s launch of Operation Lightning, a massive effort by the Iraqi government, with support from U.S. forces, to surround and arrest insurgents in Baghdad.
The project was high-risk from the get-go. If it succeeds, some violence would stop and Iraqi’s fledgling government would gain credibility in the eyes of its public. But if it failed (as now seems alarmingly possible) the highly publicized operation could deliver a hard blow to the Iraqi government’s credibility – and to U.S. efforts to get Iraqi forces to handle more of the security duties.
The fact that a largely Shiite government is pushing Operation Lightning against an overwhelmingly Sunni insurgency highlights a central dilemma for U.S. policy. There now appear to be two kinds of fighting in Iraq. One seeks to drive Americans out of Iraq, and thus targets U.S. soldiers – of whom more than 1,660 have been killed since March 2003. The second involves Sunni efforts to weaken the new Shiite-dominated government, and it will be difficult to control. Even law-abiding Sunnis suspect the Iraqi government is little more than a stalking horse for Iran. Last week, Sunni Arabs did join the government in talks about Iraq’s future constitution. Despite that progress, sectarian divisions remain deep and dangerous.
In recent weeks, U.S. military commanders set aside earlier predictions that the 138,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq could begin drawing down by 2006 – and offered a more sober analysis that forces must remain in Iraq for many years.
Such realism is exactly what U.S. policy needs. Iraqi insurgents are well-armed, well-funded and well-organized. A week’s roundup won’t end the violence and, in the meantime, the number of civilians killed will doubtless continue to climb.
