This LA Times article reinforces a trend previously identified and discussed in earlier WAR Reports that Iraq may be at a tipping point of a descent into sectarian conflict and potentially into civil war. As previous WAR Reports have discussed, building ethnic and religious sectarian tensions and conflict between Iraq?s Shia, Sunni, and Kurds?girded by the sectarian violence of militias, serving particular ethno-religious communities and Sunni discontent with the political power within the country?have drawn to the fore the ingredients for civil war in Iraq.

It would seem that these dynamics may have driven Iraq to the cusp of civil war as a result of targeted killings along ethnic-religious lines?including targeting Sunni Hussein loyalists in what appears to be avengement by Shia and/or Kurds?and the potentially fragmenting dynamics of recent political arrangements, which have empowered the Kurds and Shia who dominate the government and who Sunnis perceive as persecutory against them.

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