War zones erupt again in Iraq

US officials warned for months that violence could rise in the weeks before the planned June 30 turnover of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government, as rival sectarian and political groups angled for power and extremists tried to disturb the installation of functioning institutions.

But what is sweeping over Iraq is different from anything the US had anticipated, experts say, both in intensity and in terms of who is doing the fighting - which increasingly appears to be a possible unifying of radical Sunnis and dispossessed Shiite factions.

As fighting blazes in various parts of Iraq and increasingly involves formerly quiescent groups, war has in fact roared back. With prospects for more violent conflicts eroding the envisioned scenario of Iraq's stabilization and orderly transition, a host of new political and military risks are cropping up for the Bush administration.

"This is way beyond the scope of anything anybody who was talking about [an upsurge in violence] expected," says Patrick Lang, a retired Defense Intelligence Agency officer who specialized in the Middle East.

"We have a war going on in Fallujah," a city in the heart of the so-called Sunni Triangle, "with armor and helicopters and house-to-house fighting. We have the Shiite [cleric Moqtada al-] Sadr battling us from what looks like a growing number of locations, and you have the rest of the [Shiite] population watching with interest to see how this goes," Mr. Lang says. "This is a large-scale problem going on."

Perhaps too accustomed to the idea that Iraq had entered a tense but stabilizing postwar period, Americans may need to adjust that thinking to envision something closer to warfare, with continuing risks to US soldiers and a calendar with political and religious dates that will invite political violence, some experts say.

"It's been clear for quite some time that we face the risk of episodic violence and attacks at least until a newly elected government is to take over" by January 2005, says Anthony Cordesman, a former Defense Department official and Middle East expert now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Saying that the US faces at least another year of war in Iraq, Mr. Cordesman says the violence that the US did not anticipate has forced the Bush administration and the military to replace plans for months of expected peaceful occupation with prospects for years of low-level conflict.

Even with the unexpected turn in Iraq, however, hardly anyone, on either side of the political aisle or among officials and experts, is talking about pulling out - largely because doing so would be even more costly and dangerous for American interests.

The White House continues to insist, as President Bush did Tuesday, that the US will "stay the course."

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