AP Correspondent Robert H. Reid is based in Baghdad and writes about events in Iraq.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006, 11:40 p.m. local
BAGHDAD, Iraq
A university professor. Two young men hustling black market gasoline on a sidewalk. A college student taking the bus to class. A top tennis player and two of his friends. All were gunned down Wednesday in Iraq's roiling violence.
Not so long ago, it was mostly uniformed police, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers, government officials and former Saddam Hussein loyalists who were at risk of assassination. True, anybody could die in the random mortar blast or in a roadside bombing intended for passing American convoys or Iraqi police patrols. Tragic as they were, those deaths often seemed the result of bad luck as much as anything else.
Now, however, the victims of drive-by shootings, bombings and assassination range so broadly throughout Iraqi society that almost everyone seems to be at risk. It's as if every Iraqi is somebody's enemy - and somebody's potential victim. The pain of the victims' families are lost in the numbing statistics - a dozen bodies found here, five people gunned down there.
The grim change stems from the evolving nature of the Iraq conflict. What began as a fight by Saddam loyalists, religious fanatics and Sunni Arab nationalists against foreign military occupation has now morphed into a killing free-for-all in Baghdad and other religiously mixed areas.
With Shiite-Sunni tensions running high, much of the killing in Baghdad is deemed sectarian - tit-for-tat slaughter as the two rival religious groups fight for power in the post-Saddam Iraq. Sunni Arabs, the once privileged minority, fear domination by Shiites, still bitter over the oppression they suffered under Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime and angry over attacks by al-Qaida and others who consider Shiites as heretics.
If anything, the sectarian conflict may intensify if the Americans and their coalition partners pull out too quickly. Fear of just such an eventuality is one of the most compelling reasons for American and other foreign troops to remain here longer.
Often, however, it's hard to tell the motivation for the killings. Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs are indistinguishable physically, and who knows whether the sidewalk gasoline vendor who dies in a hail of bullets prayed in a Sunni or a Shiite mosque.
Most neighborhoods in Baghdad are religiously mixed, and a bomb detonated anywhere in the city is likely to kill or maim someone from either sect.
Some of the killings are probably criminal. Bombs that explode in grocery stores could be part of an extortion campaign. No one knows how many single victim deaths could be due to an armed robbery gone bad.
The tradition of vendetta killing runs deep in Iraqi tribal society. Kill someone, and his brothers and cousins will come after you.
In the final analysis, it almost doesn't matter what the motivation. What's important is for the new national unity government to stop it. And many veteran Iraq experts are skeptical at best over the new government's chances, no matter the sincerity of its intentions.
"Frankly, I think the tasks and difficulties are so great that expectations of improvement, if any, should be modest,'' said Phebe Marr, one of the foremost American scholars on Iraq. "The security situation will take time, effort, and in my view, resources which do not seem to be forthcoming from the U.S. and the international community.''
The White House is pinning its hopes on the new Iraqi army and police to measure up to the challenge. Training both forces is a top priority, as well as bringing more Sunni Arabs into the ranks to win the confidence of that community.
As President Bush has said, when the Iraqis stand up, the coalition will stand down.
Iraq's new prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, seems committed to restoring order. He told Al-Arabiya television that he's ordered Iraqi forces to draw up a plan to protect Baghdad with "well-trained units'' and to make sure that people who fled their homes due to sectarian threats can return in safety.
But that's a tall order in a country where loyalties to sect and ethnic group are sometimes stronger than to the nation. National loyalty is tough to develop when your fellow countrymen are out to get you purely on the basis of where you pray.
"The rank and file of both forces are neither well enough trained to be fully effective on their own, nor sufficiently loyal to the national government to remain above the sectarian struggles,'' said John Chipman, director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "It's doubtful that a collective sense of Iraqi nationalism can survive in a context of increasing sectarian violence.''
