The Associated Press reports: More than 1,000 people were killed in Iraq in July, the highest monthly death toll in five years, the U.N. said Thursday, a grim figure that shows rapidly deteriorating security as sectarian tensions soar nearly two years after U.S. troops withdrew from the country.

Violence has been on the rise all year, but the number of attacks against civilians and security forces has spiked during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which began early last month. The increased bloodshed has intensified fears that Iraq is on a path back to the widespread chaos that nearly tore the country apart in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Months of rallies by Iraq’s minority Sunnis against the Shiite-led government over what they contend is second-class treatment and the unfair use of tough anti-terrorism measures against their sect set the stage for the violence.

The killings significantly picked up after Iraqi security forces launched a heavy-handed crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in the northern town of Hawija on April 23. A ferocious backlash followed the raid, with deadly bomb attacks and sporadic gunbattles between insurgents and soldiers — this time members of the Iraqi security forces rather than U.S. troops.

Mustafa al-Kadhimi writes: An alliance combining Shiite and Sunni currents in Baghdad succeeded last Saturday, June 15, in forming a local government without the participation of the State of Law Coalition. The latter was the largest winning bloc in the local elections held this past April. This step represents a development that will have major implications on the course of the political conflict in Iraq and the general election scheduled for 2014.

Despite the success of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s State of Law Coalition in obtaining 20 of 58 seats in Baghdad, the Al-Ahrar bloc, led by Muqtada al-Sadr, won 11 seats; the Sunni Mutahidoun block, led by Osama al-Nujaifi, obtained seven seats; the Citizen bloc obtained six seats and around 14 seats were distributed over other blocs and minority quotas. The way the seats were distributed allowed these forces to come together and form a government that excluded the biggest winner in the elections.

At first glance, it seems that this distribution, according to which the local government of Baghdad was formed on Saturday, is wide-ranging, inconsistent and incompatible at key points. It also seems that the State of Law Coalition will overcome its loss by trying to attract small blocs in the Baghdad Council to change the current government, a scenario that may be realized in the coming months. There is, however, another scenario that is more attainable, which involves the new alliance in Baghdad achieving greater harmony and making this experience a prelude to changing the political map in the general elections in 2014.

Not only does Baghdad have the largest population in Iraq (about 8 million), but its local government may have the means to tame the sectarian sensitivities, which are becoming more dangerous in Iraq and the region.

The Sunni Mutahidoun bloc was given the most prominent legislative position in the city — head of the provincial council — while the position of governor was allocated to the Sadrist movement, and Ammar al-Hakim’s party obtained the position of mayor of Baghdad. This represents a new step in understanding the nature of the conflict in Iraq and finding a way to resolve it. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: More than 1,000 people were killed in violence in Iraq in May, making it the deadliest month since the sectarian slaughter of 2006-07, the United Nations said on Saturday, as fears mounted of a return to civil war.

Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in the last two months as al Qaeda and Sunni Islamist insurgents, invigorated by the Sunni-led revolt in Syria and by Sunni discontent at home, seek to revive the kind of all-out inter-communal conflict that killed tens of thousands five years ago.

“That is a sad record,” Martin Kobler, the U.N. envoy in Baghdad, said in a statement. “Iraqi political leaders must act immediately to stop this intolerable bloodshed.”

The renewed bloodletting reflects worsening tensions between Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government and the Sunni minority, seething with resentment at their treatment since Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the U.S.-led invasion of 2003 and later hanged.

Al Jazeera reports: Fresh attacks in Iraq, including car bombs in Baghdad, have killed at least 19 people, including police officers, amid a surge of violence that has left 160 dead in a week and increased fears of all-out sectarian conflict.

On Thursday morning, a car bomb in northeast Baghdad killed four people and wounded a dozen more, while another vehicle packed with explosives went off in the centre of the capital, leaving two dead and 10 wounded, officials said.

Al Jazeera’s Jane Arraf, reporting from Baghdad, said that at least eight policemen were killed in the northern city of Mosul after unknown gunmen opened fire on local officers.

“There has not been a claim of responsibility for the attack. But in the past an al-Qaeda front group has claimed responsility for attacks on Shia areas and security forces, which they see as illegitimate,” she said.

Two border policemen were also ambushed along the main Iraq-Jordan highway and shot dead.

The latest violence came a day after multiple bomb blasts struck two neighbourhoods in the Iraqi capital, killing at least 28 people, including several members of a wedding party.

Reuters reports: More than 70 people were killed in a wave of bombings in markets in Shi’ite neighborhoods across Baghdad on Monday in worsening sectarian violence in Iraq.

No group claimed responsibility for the blasts. But Sunni Muslim Islamist insurgents and al-Qaeda’ s Iraqi wing have increased attacks since the beginning of the year and often target Shi’ite districts.

More than a dozen blasts tore into markets and shopping areas in districts across the Iraqi capital, including twin bombs just several hundred meters apart that killed at least 13 people in the capital’s Sadr City area, police and hospital officials said.

“A driver hit another car and left pretending to bring traffic police. Another car rushed to take him away and right after his car exploded among people who had gathered to see what was happening,” said bystander Hassan Kadhim. “People were shouting for help and blood covered their faces.”

Tensions between the Shi’ite leadership and the Sunni Muslim minority are at their worst since U.S. troops left in December 2011, and the conflict in Syria is straining Iraq’s fragile communal balance.

Hadeel Al Sayegh writes: Last month for the first time, I saw the aftermath of a bombing in Iraq, at the entrance to Baghdad Airport.The explosion had occurred a few moments before our plane landed from Abu Dhabi.

Several cars had parked at Abbas Bin Firnas, the final checkpoint before the airport, where people say farewell to their loved ones. By the time our car passed the scene, it was evacuated and all that was left was the burnt black frames of the vehicles. Scores of people died.

My father, who panicked when he saw the news on TV, was relieved to see me at his construction site in Baghdad with all my limbs attached.

He was talking to several engineers, one of whom told him that security officials found a bomb at the entrance of a nearby mosque while he was performing his prayers. They were lucky to have defused it just in time. The consensus was that an attempt to re-ignite sectarian divisions was imminent.

Little did we know that Iraq would unravel so quickly. Violence has always occurred on the outskirts of the capital and in more remote areas in the country. But today, almost three weeks later, even Baghdad is not immune.

In the past, attacks would target public areas such as markets, restaurants and cafes but now the perpetrators are focusing on places of worship – Sunni and Shia mosques.

Eighty-six people died on Monday; it was the bloodiest and deadliest day of the year. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Bombings in Shiite areas of Baghdad and in northern Iraq killed more than 35 people on Wednesday, after weeks of violence by Sunni Islamist insurgents determined to set off sectarian confrontations.

Tensions between minority Sunni Muslims and the Shiites who now lead Iraq are at their highest since American troops pulled out in December 2011, with relations coming under more pressure by the day from the largely sectarian conflict in neighboring Syria.

A string of car bombings hit Shiite neighborhoods across Baghdad on Wednesday evening, including one outside a cafe and another at a market, killing at least 22 people and wounding dozens more, the police said.

Michael Knights writes: As American troops were pulling out of Iraq in 2010, the U.S. effort to stabilize the country resembled the task of an exhausted man who had just pushed a huge boulder up a steep hill. Momentum had been painstakingly built up and the crest approached. Was it safe to stop pushing and hope that the momentum would take the boulder over the top? Or would the boulder grind to a halt and then slowly, frighteningly roll back toward us?

Now we know — and to be honest, the answer is hardly a surprise. Iraq is a basket case these days, and none of its problems came out of the blue. In the latest bout of sectarian and ethnic bloodletting, coordinated bomb attacks ripped through Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and also northern Iraq, killing more than 30 people. The spasm of violence followed clashes between the Iraqi army and Sunni protesters and insurgents last month, where the federal government temporarily lost control of some town centers and urban neighborhoods in Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Diyala provinces.

Negative indicators abound: Armed civilian militias are reactivating, tit-for-tat bombings are targeting Sunni and Shiite mosques, and some Iraqi military forces are breaking down into ethnic-sectarian components or suffering from chronic absenteeism. Numerous segments of Iraq’s body politic — Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shia — are exasperated over the government’s inability to address political or economic inequities, and are talking seriously about partition. [Continue reading…]

The Los Angeles Times reports: Less than a year and a half after the last U.S. troops left, Iraq’s political leaders are openly debating the prospect of two dangerous paths for their country: de facto division or civil war. Perhaps both.

Tension between the Shiite majority, now in control of the levers of power, and the Sunni Arab minority, which dominated under Saddam Hussein, has been building for months. But politicians on all sides agree that the country has entered a perilous new phase, highlighted in late April by an attack on a Sunni protest camp by security forces that killed at least 45 people.

As word of the shootings spread, fighting erupted around the country, leaving more than 200 people dead. Overall, the United Nations said, more than 700 people were killed in Iraq in April, the highest monthly toll in five years.

Polarized political leaders openly discuss the threat of more bloodshed and the gradual breakup of the country, either through an informal declaration of an independent Sunni Arab region, modeled on the Kurds’ region in northern Iraq, or outright war. [Continue reading…]

Joel Rayburn writes: The Iraq conflict came back into view in the last week of April, when several areas of northern Iraq exploded in violence on a scale not seen since the height of the 2006-2008 civil war. The carnage began on April 23, with either a botched arrest attempt or a brutal crackdown by government troops, just three days after Iraq held largely peaceful elections for local government. In the early hours, Iraqi forces raided a campsite for Sunni anti-government protesters in the town of Hawijah, a former insurgent stronghold near Kirkuk, ostensibly seeking suspects in the murder of an Iraqi soldier a few days before. Which side shot first is still unclear, but when the gunfire stopped about twenty protesters and three Iraqi soldiers were dead, with more than 100 people wounded.

The Hawijah clash rippled across northern and central Iraq. Within hours of the raid, Sunni gunmen overran police and army outposts in neighboring towns, leaving more than fifty dead on both sides. Some of the gunmen were likely associated with the Naqshbandi Army, a potent Ba’athist-related militant group whose spokesmen angrily announced immediately after the Hawijah raid that it would return to war against the government. By April 25, the fighting spread to Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, where Sunni gunmen engaged Iraqi troops in another battle that left nearly forty more people dead. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki went on national television to warn that continued “sedition” against the government would lead to a full-scale sectarian war. Despite his warning, or perhaps because of it, on April 26 the violence spread to Baghdad, where four Sunni mosques were bombed soon after noon prayers. The next day, Sunni gunmen pulled five government intelligence officers out of a car and executed them. The bloodshed culminated on April 29, when four Al Qaeda-style bombings in Shia cities south of Baghdad killed twenty-five and wounded almost seventy more, bringing the death toll for the month to more than 700, the highest since the dark days of summer 2008.

This spiral of violence is disappointing, but not surprising. For those who have been watching Iraq, it seemed bound to happen. For several months, Iraq’s Sunnis and Maliki’s Shia-led government have fought a political battle that began when Maliki’s troops attempted to arrest one of the country’s top Sunni leaders, Maliki’s own Finance Minister Rafe al-Issawi, on terrorism charges on December 20. Tens of thousands of Sunnis protested in streets in all of Iraq’s Sunni provinces, where they set up “Occupy”-style camps and carried out near-daily demonstrations. Maliki responded by deploying Shia-led army units around the most restive Sunni cities, including the unit that assaulted the protest camp in Hawijah. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: In the first Iraqi elections since the American troop withdrawal, Sunni candidates are being attacked and killed in greater numbers than in recent campaigns, raising concerns in Washington over Iraq’s political stability and the viability of a democratic system the United States has heavily invested in over years of war and diplomacy.

At least 15 candidates, all members of the minority Sunni community, have been assassinated — some apparently by political opponents, others by radical Sunni militants. Many others have been wounded or kidnapped or have received menacing text messages or phone calls demanding that they withdraw.

By going after members of their own sect, radical Sunnis aligned with Al Qaeda are effectively seeking to destabilize the Shiite-led government, making an already angry and alienated community fearful to participate in national governance. At the same time, it appears intra-Sunni rivalries are inadvertently aiding the radical cause, as Sunnis kill political adversaries in their quest for power.

As candidates nervously continue meeting voters, promising jobs and handing out cellphone cards in exchange for assurances, sworn on the Koran, of their votes in local elections this weekend, there are worries that the violence is deterring good candidates — and that voters will be put off as well.

In the latest surge of violence, more than 20 attacks around the country on Monday killed close to 50 people and wounded nearly 200. Two schools in Hilla that were to serve as polling sites were blown up by homemade bombs; no one was killed, but the explosions suggested that insurgents might be intent on attacking voters and not just candidates. Security officials in Hilla quickly declared a state of emergency, and said they had intelligence that militants were preparing to target more polling stations in the region.

At the same time, the violence could further mar the credibility of an election that was already being closely watched for fraud or other abuses: for the first time since the American invasion in 2003, Iraqi officials will be largely on their own in securing and monitoring elections.

“Killing candidates means instilling fear,” said Hameed Fadhil, a political-science professor at Baghdad University. “And that is why I think it will affect voter participation, because I don’t think that people will want to risk their lives again.” [Continue reading…]

Peter Harling writes: After violence that shattered hundreds of thousands of lives and left nearly everyone with a tragic story to tell, life in Iraq has settled into a strange normality — with no discernible direction or clear future. “How do you make sense of the last ten years?” said a novelist, who is trying to do just that. “The problem is not the starting point, but where to end. To write the history of the Algerian civil war, you had to wait till it was over. Here, we are still in the middle of a sequence of events whose outcome we cannot see.” The structure of his novel, in which each chapter relates to a different year, means he remains hostage to a political system that continues to keep the country in suspense.

A decade after the US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraq remains in crisis, although you wouldn’t know it from visiting Baghdad. The suicide attacks, car bombs and other explosive devices used, and abused, by the resistance and sectarian militias are much rarer than they were a few years ago, leading the world’s media to lose much of its interest in Iraq.

Traffic is easing its way through the maze of roadblocks and concrete barriers that had made it a nightmare. Many Iraqis who fled the violence in 2006 and took refuge in Kurdistan, or abroad, have returned. Those who stood accused of “collaborating” with the US are fitting back into society. The high cost of living doesn’t stop the new recipients of oil money from frantic consumerism. Indeed there’s more of a bustle in the shopping streets than in the corridors of power, where politicians on all sides react to the latest political tussle with remarkable nonchalance.

Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s detractors have been growing as he has accumulated powers. His trial of strength with the Kurdish leadership in the northeast of the country, over oil revenue and disputed territories, did help him rally support among the Arab population, both Shia and Sunni, establishing him as the defender of their interests and, more generally, of the country’s integrity. But then he overreached himself by using the “terrorism” argument to push aside politicians such as Rafi al-Issawi, his Sunni deputy, in a political system where senior government posts are allocated on ethno-sectarian lines. This led to huge popular protests against Al-Maliki, which forced Sunni politicians whom he had co-opted to distance themselves from him.

That in turn almost inevitably rekindled Shia identity politics, in a society still scarred by sectarian violence, particularly rife between 2006 and 2008. But not everyone in this diverse Shia community is an ally of Al-Maliki, since his personal power increases by reducing the influence of his rivals. [Continue reading…]

Eli Sugarman and Omar Al-Nidawi write: Iraq’s nascent democracy faces a new dilemma: whether or not to embrace the political comeback of a former militia leader. Muqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand Shia cleric, has launched a public relations campaign, rebranding himself as a voice of sectarian harmony. Should Iraqis welcome Sadr with open arms, or be wary of his new persona?

Sadr first made a name for himself as an erratic demagogue who stoked sectarian fighting and helped bring Iraq’s young democracy to its knees. From 2003 to 2008, Sadr’s Mahdi Army took up arms against successive Iraqi governments and committed widespread atrocities against the country’s Sunni minority, in addition to targeting U.S. installations and personnel until American forces left Iraq at the end of 2011.

Then, last spring, he abruptly changed course, and he has spent the past year reforming his image and serving as a voice of moderation in Iraq. Sadr now openly decries violence, advocates the peaceful resolution of Iraq’s political disputes, and prays with religious leaders from other faiths and sects.

On the one hand, Sadr’s new tune could reflect his genuine maturation and a newfound desire to play a positive role in Iraq’s dysfunctional political system; on the other hand, it could be just a new tactic to expand his influence and power. Either way, the more Sadr can convince Iraqis — disenfranchised Shia, Kurds, and Sunnis alike — that he is a reliable and moderate partner, the more power he will accrue at the expense of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, also a Shiite. Iraq’s Sunni Arabs and Kurds face a tough choice, because working with Sadr could lead to two very different outcomes. Joining him to challenge Maliki could perhaps promote a more inclusive political process, but it could also re-empower the rule of sectarian militias. The key for Iraqis is to vet the new Sadr carefully and insist that he backs his sweetened rhetoric with concrete actions. [Continue reading…]

Patrick Cockburn writes: The civil war in Syria is destabilising Iraq as it changes the balance of power between the country’s communities. The Sunni minority in Iraq, which two years ago appeared defeated, has long been embittered and angry at discrimination against it by a hostile state. Today, it is emboldened by the uprising of the Syrian Sunni, as well as a growing sense that the political tide in the Middle East is turning against the Shia and in favour of the Sunni.

Could a variant of the Syrian revolt spread to the western Anbar Province and Sunni areas of Iraq north of Baghdad? The answer, crucial to the future of Iraq, depends on how the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, responds to the seven-week-long protests in Anbar and the Sunni heartlands. His problem is similar to that which, two years ago faced rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. They had to choose between ceding some power and relying on repression.

Most Arab rulers chose wrongly, treating protests as if they were a plot or not so broadly based that they could not be crushed by traditional methods of repression. The situation in Iraq is not quite the same, since Maliki owes his position to victory in real elections, though this success was not total and depended overwhelmingly on Shia votes. He has nevertheless ruled as if he had the mandate to monopolise power.

Maliki has been ambivalent about the protests since they started in December last year. On occasion, he has denounced them as a plot by ex-Baathists or other enemies of the state acting as proxies for hostile foreign powers. At others, he has offered concessions, but nowhere near enough to quell the protests. His strategy is probably to play for time, an approach that has served him well in the past. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Across Iraq’s western desert, thousands of Sunni Muslims block highways, chant and pray in protests against Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki that grow more defiant by the day.

Their demands are many, but the old Iraqi flags from Saddam Hussein’s era and Sunni tribal colours fluttering among them are a clear message to Maliki: Enough, our time has come again.

In Iraqi cities like Ramadi and Falluja, where tribal ties are strong, many Sunnis have harboured a sense of marginalisation ever since Saddam’s fall and the Shi’ite majority’s empowerment.

But the pent-up Sunni anger that erupted a month ago has many worried that Iraq is heading for an explosion of Shi’ite-on-Sunni violence that will divide it along sectarian faultlines.

Already protests are becoming volatile. Iraqi troops shot five people in clashes in Falluja on Friday, illustrating the room for miscalculation with sectarian hardliners and Islamist insurgents trying to steer unrest into crisis.

Just outside Ramadi, Sunni men sleep in tents and pray along a blockaded highway, wrapping themselves in old three-star Iraqi national flags, chanting slogans and waving migwars, the wooden mace that Iraqis used to fight the British in the 1920s. [Continue reading…]

Ranj Alaaldin writes: In 1964, the Shia population of Iraq’s south gathered in the holy city of Karbala to protest against the sectarian, predominantly Sunni, government of Abdul Salam Al Arif.

Witness accounts, as well as US and UK diplomatic cables, say that tens of thousands, perhaps over 100,000, rallied against the regime, which had come to power in Iraq through a military coup the previous year.

Through the rest of the 1960s tensions continued to increase between the authoritarian, Sunni-dominated government and the Shia community, marginalised by a range of government policies that made life harder for them.

In the decades that followed, the Shia were increasingly and violently oppressed under Iraq’s Baath regime and its dictatorial leader, Saddam Hussein.

Now, almost 50 years later, the tables have turned, and Iraq’s Sunni population is complaining – peacefully and violently – of being excluded and discriminated against.

About 60,000 were in the streets of the Anbar city of Fallujah on Friday. Recent weeks have seen many such protests, in Anbar and across the primarily Sunni provinces of the north, the region that formed the heart of the Sunni insurgency after Hussein was deposed.

These people are protesting against a lack of political recognition, failure of basic services and alleged indiscriminate anti-terror raids and arrests.

The demonstrations started after the controversial arrest of the bodyguards of the country’s finance minister Rafi Issawi, a Sunni.

Those arrests came just a year after the equally controversial arrest warrant for the country’s vice-president, Tariq Al Hashimi, who is now living in Turkey.

All of this reflects the dysfunctional politics in Baghdad. Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki has failed to lead anything even remotely resembling a serious, efficient and effective government. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Moktada al-Sadr expressed support on Tuesday for fresh protests against Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a fellow Shiite but his political opponent, saying that Mr. Maliki bears “full responsibility” for the unrest in the country.

As with many developments in Iraq, the timing and venue of Mr. Sadr’s comments to reporters were as notable as their meaning. He spoke in Najaf, one of the holiest cities of his Shiite sect, just as Iraq ended its bloodiest year since 2009, a reflection of unabated ethnic, sectarian and political tensions among the country’s Kurdish, Arab, Sunni and Shiite populations.

Several times during the gathering, Mr. Sadr directed his remarks at Mr. Maliki, who has taken recent steps that suggested he was asserting greater control over many aspects of the government and that prompted fears he was cracking down on his political opponents. Mr. Sadr’s remarks could indicate that he is trying to test the political waters or possible support from the street before Iraq’s provincial elections, which are scheduled for the spring.

Mr. Sadr also tried to assert broader credibility for the anti-Maliki protests by comparing them to the movements that have swept many Arab countries in the past few years, calling for new government leaders and better representation.

“The Iraqi spring is coming,” Mr. Sadr said, in a tone that implied a warning to Mr. Maliki.

“We are with the demonstrators, and Parliament must be with them, not against them,” he said. “The legitimate demands of the demonstrators, by which people know what they want, should be met.”

Mr. Sadr was careful to appear moderate and to say he was speaking for all Iraqis in his remarks, which his media office distributed to journalists throughout the country. He said he supported the widespread demonstrations as long as they were peaceful and did not seek to create divisions, driving the last point home by adding that he was willing to go to Sunni-dominated Anbar Province to take part in protests.