Sectarian Strife in Iraq Imperils Entire Region, Analysts Warn

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad last month ranked Syria and Iran with al-Qaeda in Iraq, one of the country's principal Sunni Arab insurgent groups, in terms of destabilizing influences in Iraq. Despite that assessment, the United States has not held substantive talks with Syria regarding Iraq since 2004 or with Iran since the war began in 2003.

Diplomats and analysts increasingly are urging the Bush administration to reach out to both countries as part of a regional approach to quelling Iraq's troubles. Former secretary of state James A. Baker III, leader of a panel preparing a set of policy recommendations for the Bush administration, already has endorsed the idea of seeking the help of Iran and Syria.

"The thing is, because Iran and Syria both have spoiling power in Iraq, if you could neutralize them," it would ease some of the many pressures within Iraq, Hiltermann said. But he said the two countries may demand a mighty trade-off: for Syria, U.S. help with its biggest stated aim, winning back the Golan Heights from Israel; for Iran, U.S. compromise over its nuclear program.

Hiltermann acknowledged the difficulty. "I'm saying it's required," he said. "I'm not saying it's possible."

In Baghdad's Shiite stronghold of Sadr City late last month, aides to one of the country's leading Shiite clerics held a rally to urge followers to bide their time until the American forces leave the country. The rally was called by followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, a strongly anti-occupation figure whose bloc is a leading partner in the current Shiite-led government and who is one likely claimant to power should the Americans withdraw.

"Will America win?" a speaker in a brown turban demanded before the more than 1,000 protesters, as a brewing storm whirled dirt and trash and pelted ralliers with drops of cold rain. Loudspeakers shot his question back across the square.

The men thrust their fists in the air, shouting their answer out to a grim, gray sky: "No, no! America will not win!"

Between 2 percent and 5 percent of Iraq's 27 million people have been killed, wounded or uprooted since the Americans invaded in 2003, calculates Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for International and Strategic Studies.

"This is civil war," he said.

Since midsummer, Shiite militias, Sunni insurgent groups, ad-hoc Sunni self-defense groups and tribes have accelerated campaigns of sectarian cleansing that are forcing countless thousands of Shiites and Sunnis in Baghdad to seek safety among their own kind.

Whole towns north and south of Baghdad are locked in the same sectarian struggle, among them the central Shiite city of Balad, still under siege by gunmen from surrounding Sunni towns after a bloody spate of sectarian massacres last month.

Even outside the epicenter of sectarian strife in the central region of the country, Shiite factions battle each other in the south, Sunni tribes and factions clash in the west. Across Iraq, the criminal gangs that emerged with the collapse of law and order rule patches of turf as mini-warlords.