thedrifter
10-31-06, 03:27 PM
Language on Iraq -- when is it civil war?
By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent
What do you call a situation where 3,000 citizens of a country kill each other every month through bombing, shooting and beheading? If the country is Iraq, it depends on who answers the question.
U.S. and Iraqi government leaders are avoiding the term "civil war," although President George W. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and several generals have said Iraq was "close to," "nearing" or "in danger of" civil war.
Experts outside the administration have been less circumspect.
"Iraq's conflict is now worse than civil war," said an October report by the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank close to the Democratic Party.
"The country suffers from at least four internal conflicts -- a Shiite-Sunni civil war in the center, intra-Shiite conflicts in the south, a Sunni insurgency in the west and ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds in the north."
Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander of U.S. military operations in the Middle East, told a Senate committee in August that "the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war."
Since then, the death toll from sectarian violence has risen steadily, as have the number of insurgent attacks on U.S. troops. From July to September, 9,200 Iraqi civilians were killed, according to an October 30 report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
"In Iraq, we'll never be in civil war," Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said a few months after taking office six months ago.
His predecessor, Iyad Allawi, saw things differently. "We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."
In the latest of a series of reports on Iraq, Anthony Cordesman, a widely-respected expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, said this month the level and sources of violence in Iraq clearly meet a dictionary definition of civil war.
Ken Pollack and Daniel Byman of the Brookings Institution think tank, reached a similar conclusion two months earlier.
"The debate is over. By any definition, Iraq is in a state of civil war," they said.
NO CIVIL WAR IN MILITARY DICTIONARY
How to officially define "civil war" has been particularly difficult for the U.S. military. The U.S. Department of Defense's Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms has no entry for civil war and the term is also not mentioned in a new counter-insurgency manual for the Army and the Marines.
"It's really a political question," said an army officer who did not want to be named.
"And where this is debated publicly, it is mostly driven by politics. War critics make the point that we (the U.S.) aren't where we thought we'd be in Iraq, no matter how you describe what's happening."
Two Democratic senators, Harry Reid and Edward Kennedy, have called on the Bush administration to provide quarterly assessments of the extent to which Iraq is in a civil war to make sure the facts on the ground match official statements.
Like the military, the U.S. intelligence community, composed of 16 different agencies, has not agreed on a common definition either, officials say. The Central Intelligence Agency's own criteria are secret.
In terms of casualties, one measure used by political scientists studying conflict, Iraq ranks alongside Algeria, Guatemala, Peru, and Lebanon, all of which have been called civil wars.
Unlike in Lebanon, where many citizens called their 15-year conflict "the events," Iraqis have not so far settled on a common description for what is happening, although "the current situation" is often used.
When Reuters Iraq bureau chief Alastair Macdonald raised the question of terminology with Ihsan Abudlhadi, owner of Baghdad's main English-language bookstore and a connoisseur of Iraqi phrase-making, the reply was:
"We haven't agreed yet whether it's a civil war or if it's just a mess. No one can really agree on just what kind of troubles we're having."
Ellie
By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent
What do you call a situation where 3,000 citizens of a country kill each other every month through bombing, shooting and beheading? If the country is Iraq, it depends on who answers the question.
U.S. and Iraqi government leaders are avoiding the term "civil war," although President George W. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and several generals have said Iraq was "close to," "nearing" or "in danger of" civil war.
Experts outside the administration have been less circumspect.
"Iraq's conflict is now worse than civil war," said an October report by the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank close to the Democratic Party.
"The country suffers from at least four internal conflicts -- a Shiite-Sunni civil war in the center, intra-Shiite conflicts in the south, a Sunni insurgency in the west and ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds in the north."
Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander of U.S. military operations in the Middle East, told a Senate committee in August that "the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war."
Since then, the death toll from sectarian violence has risen steadily, as have the number of insurgent attacks on U.S. troops. From July to September, 9,200 Iraqi civilians were killed, according to an October 30 report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
"In Iraq, we'll never be in civil war," Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said a few months after taking office six months ago.
His predecessor, Iyad Allawi, saw things differently. "We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."
In the latest of a series of reports on Iraq, Anthony Cordesman, a widely-respected expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, said this month the level and sources of violence in Iraq clearly meet a dictionary definition of civil war.
Ken Pollack and Daniel Byman of the Brookings Institution think tank, reached a similar conclusion two months earlier.
"The debate is over. By any definition, Iraq is in a state of civil war," they said.
NO CIVIL WAR IN MILITARY DICTIONARY
How to officially define "civil war" has been particularly difficult for the U.S. military. The U.S. Department of Defense's Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms has no entry for civil war and the term is also not mentioned in a new counter-insurgency manual for the Army and the Marines.
"It's really a political question," said an army officer who did not want to be named.
"And where this is debated publicly, it is mostly driven by politics. War critics make the point that we (the U.S.) aren't where we thought we'd be in Iraq, no matter how you describe what's happening."
Two Democratic senators, Harry Reid and Edward Kennedy, have called on the Bush administration to provide quarterly assessments of the extent to which Iraq is in a civil war to make sure the facts on the ground match official statements.
Like the military, the U.S. intelligence community, composed of 16 different agencies, has not agreed on a common definition either, officials say. The Central Intelligence Agency's own criteria are secret.
In terms of casualties, one measure used by political scientists studying conflict, Iraq ranks alongside Algeria, Guatemala, Peru, and Lebanon, all of which have been called civil wars.
Unlike in Lebanon, where many citizens called their 15-year conflict "the events," Iraqis have not so far settled on a common description for what is happening, although "the current situation" is often used.
When Reuters Iraq bureau chief Alastair Macdonald raised the question of terminology with Ihsan Abudlhadi, owner of Baghdad's main English-language bookstore and a connoisseur of Iraqi phrase-making, the reply was:
"We haven't agreed yet whether it's a civil war or if it's just a mess. No one can really agree on just what kind of troubles we're having."
Ellie