In light of a recent surge of insurgent terrorist attacks, kidnappings, and assassinations, all with pronounced sectarian targeting contours, and the resultant sectarian tension, Iraq may be at a pivotal stage in its national cohesion, renaissance, democratization, and overall security. The strategic intent of these insurgent attacks is seemingly centered on stoking sectarian civil war between Iraq?s Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish communities. This suggests a shrewd strategic tact on the part of insurgents’ effort to fragment Iraq?s government and society via civil war and to exploit the subsequent chaotic environment to seize greater power, granting them traction on their particular insurgent agendas.

In conducting attacks targeting sectarian groups, the insurgents hope to exploit and manipulate deeply rooted individual and communal mindsets, dynamics, and perceptions of intra- and inter-group trust, security, and threat that are etched along identity delineations and characteristics. The attacks seek to rend hard-won and fragile inter-sectarian trust and cooperation within the government and society and to menace each ethno-religious group with the threat of the ?outside? other, provoking a survivalist impulse to retreat into the perceived security, sanctuary, and trust of the particular groups. In this way, the dynamics of sectarian civil war are set in motion, as groups increasingly adopt an insularly, mutually suspicious, and besieged mindset perception of the rival groups.