Civil war? No, that'll be much worse, Iraqis say

BAGHDAD, Dec 6: Enraged citizens going from house to house, street to street, killing their neighbours of decades, with security forces powerless to stop them -- that is the nightmare many Iraqis fear if the country sinks into civil war.

The toll of sectarian bombings, shootings and murders which militants are exacting may be appalling, but many Iraqis think it is nothing compared to what genuine civil war would bring.

So for all the debate abroad on whether civil war already exists, and despite UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's declaration that it does, officials here refuse to agree -- partly because they hope the worst can still be averted.

''The situation is bad and it is getting worse,'' an official from the main Shi'ite political bloc, the United Alliance, told Reuters. ''But one thing is certain -- this is not yet civil war.

''I hope we never get there because if we do the killing will be on a massive scale -- the Iraqi people would become extinct.'' The growing depth of sectarian sentiment within the Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim communities, which has caused ordinary people to become estranged, and the ubiquity of weaponry in a country where nearly every household has a Kalashnikov automatic rifle lead many to believe all-out civil war would be devastating.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's unity government put out an angry statement late on Monday rejecting the comments by Annan that Iraq was already in the grip of ''civil war'' much worse than that of Lebanon in the 1980s and that people had cause to feel life was better before US troops overthrew Saddam Hussein.

It accused Annan of ''gilding the image'' of Saddam's rule.

Today's picture is nonetheless grim. The United Nations estimated that some 120 people were killed a day in October, many by sectarian deaths squads, some operating under cover of the security forces themselves, who snatch people from streets and homes, torture them and then dump their bodies.

The latest Iraqi data for November has suggested a leap of another 40 per cent or more in the death rate last month. The UN also found that 100,000 people were fleeing the country every month. Proportional to the population, that is equal to 1 million Americans emigrating every four weeks.

NOT YET BOSNIA

But a senior European diplomat in Baghdad agreed with the government that the situation in Iraq was still not beyond solution and so could not yet be labelled civil war. ''If there is a civil war here it would be like Bosnia multiplied by five or six,'' he said, recalling the way the Balkan state was carved up into rival territories and neighbours turned on each other, killing civilians in ''ethnic cleansing''.

The United Alliance official noted that the government had been able to impose a form of order by declaring curfews on Baghdad, such as after a bombing last month that killed over 200 people in the deadliest attack since the US invasion.

If it were no longer able to do that, and if it no longer had control over security forces that many fear are loyal more to sectarian leaders, then Iraq would be in civil war, he said.

''So far, when we impose a curfew people observe it. But if there's civil war, no one will listen to anything the government says even with thousands of troops on the streets -- and that's if the security forces don't just join in.'' As Maliki announced another round of high-level ''national reconciliation'' talks among the main community leaders in mid- December, a senior government official insisted all was not lost. ''The situation here is still controllable and reversible, so it can't really be considered a civil war,'' he said.

Another Shi'ite politician, speaking anonymously as most do in Iraq for fear of violent reprisal, said: ''Yes, there are militias but they are taking up arms to achieve political goals and their leaderships are clear on this and can control them.'' Others, including US military officers, question how far many armed Iraqis are responsive to the higher leadership.

But Baghdad political scientist Hazim al-Naimi said leaders still had the power to hold most people back from the brink -- if the dominant groups acknowledge that no one group can win outright control of the oil-rich state and agree to share power: ''The officials can stop this ugliness when they want to. The question is: 'Have we entered the black hole yet, the point of no return?' The answer is: 'Not yet'.''

REUTERS