The insurgency in Iraq has become a “war after the war” that threatens to divide the country and create a full-scale civil conflict. It has triggered sectarian and ethnic violence that dominates the struggle to reshape Iraq as a modern state, has emerged as a growing threat to the Gulf region, and has become linked to the broader struggle between Sunni and Shi’ite Islamist extremism, and moderation and reform, throughout the Islamic world.
Since its inception in the spring of 2003, the nature of the fighting in Iraq has evolved from a struggle between Coalition forces and former regime loyalists to a much more diffuse conflict, involving a number of Sunni groups, Shi’ite militias, and foreign jihadists, and which has spread to become a widespread civil conflict.
In the process, the complex patterns of conflict in Iraq have become a broad struggle for sectarian and ethnic control of political and economic space. Open violence has become steadily more serious, but it is only part of the story. Shi’ite, Sunni, and Kurdish factions increasingly organize to provide local security while seeking to push other factions out of areas where they have the majority. These problems have been compounded by de facto exclusion of many ex- Ba’ath members and professionals that form the secular and nationalist core of the country, and the slow purging of other nationalists who do not take a sectarian and ethnic side from Ministries and professions.
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