Can the U.S. Stop the Civil War in Iraq?
No. The U.S. occupation of Iraq is making the civil war worse, not better. It is the U.S. government’s divide-and-rule policies – balancing between the different ethnic and religious groups in Iraq and playing one off against the other – that has helped to unleash the cycle of religious violence. After the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime, which had based itself on the Sunnis, the U.S. propped up a government based on the Shi’as and built up a Shi’a and Kurdish Iraqi military to use against the primarily Sunni insurgency. One senior U.S. government official had to admit that the U.S.-backed Shi’a-dominated government was fueling the civil war, particularly by the Interior Ministry’s use of death squads and secret prisons against Sunnis. This has alienated Sunnis from the new government and driven them into the hands of Sunni fundamentalists who are carrying out terrorist attacks against Shi’as. Before the U.S. occupation, Iraq had a long tradition of secularism and ethnic and relig
