Does it matter if you call it a civil war?
Iraq's constitution could be seen as a draft 'peace pact' for warring parties.
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Kurdish leaders, who see the current constitutional debate as a potential stepping stone to autonomy, occasionally threaten pulling out of Iraq entirely if they're not satisfied by negotiations soon. "If the constitution doesn't settle the issue of Kirkuk, we could just back up and go back to the north. We know these other parties, they're just stalling until they get stronger than us in the future,'' says says Faraj al-Haydari, a senior official in the Baghdad offices of the Kurdish Democratic Party.
Saleh Mutlak, a leading Sunni on the drafting committee, says it looks to him like Shiites and Kurds are looking to cut a deal among themselves on the constitution that will leave areas they dominate with the lion's share of Iraq's resources, "something we will never allow to happen." Mr. Mutlak dismisses the dominant Shiite parties, Sciri and Dawa, as "Iranian Shiites,'' whose first loyalties aren't to Iraq. Many Sciri and Dawa activists were exiled to Iran, a Shiite theocracy, until Saddam fell.
But that's not his only worry. As with many modern civil wars, its contestants have multiple enemies. Mutlak says he fears reprisals not only from Shiite militias, but from the wing of the Sunni insurgency led by the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant behind many of Iraq's most devastating attacks on civilians.
Mr. Zarqawi and his followers reject all participation in the political process, and are suspected to be behind the murder last week of three activists from the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni group that Mutlak is close to, in the northern city of Mosul. The three were canvassing for Sunni participation in upcoming elections.
Though there has been extensive training and equipment programs for the new Iraqi army and police, few Iraqis seem to be putting much faith in them. While Sunnis complain that new forces are infiltrated by the militias of the major Shiite parties, even many Shiites prefer to rely on sectarian militias for their own protection.
Majid Jabr Faihod, for example, sits in his family's spare home in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, and describes how the death of his father in May turned into a family tragedy. He stayed behind as eight family members - including three of his four brothers - took their father to be buried near the holy Shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, a centuries-old Shiite practice.
On the way there, the minibus transporting them was waylaid in Latifiyah, a Sunni insurgent stronghold. The eight men were separated from the women in the bus, and driven away, along with their father's coffin. Mr. Faihod says that all of the men were mutilated, then killed and dragged through the streets of Latifiyah, along with their father's body.
"This is entirely because we're Shiite, and they hate us," says Faihod. "The armed forces are weak and can't protect us. Here in Sadr City, thank God, we can rely on the Mahdi Army."
The Mahdi Army is the militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and while it's been out of the headlines since fighting pitched battles with US forces last year for control of Najaf, it appears as strong as ever in Sadr City, an almost completely Shiite section of Baghdad with 2 million people.
In recent weeks, Islamic vigilantes believed to be aligned with the Mahdi Army have killed a number of Sadr City residents for the crime of "immorality." In Faihod's case, the Mahdi Army paid for the family's mass funeral and provided security on the second trip to Najaf.
"We believe in the old law, blood for blood,'' says Raad Faihod, the other surviving brother. "The truth has to come out, and the truth is that all of these terrorists are Sunnis and their political parties. They have to be dealt with."
