CAIRO — More than eight years after the U.S.-led invasion that was proclaimed to help Iraqis build a multi-ethnic and democratic nation, sectarian sentiments are still simmering in Iraq, threatening to rekindle hostilities in the ethnically divided and war-battered nation.

Tensions escalated last week after gunmen in the Sunni-dominated Anbar province shot dead 22 Shi’a pilgrims on a bus on their way from Syria to the neighboring Shi’a holy city of Karbala on 12 September.

At the same time, rows over oil revenues, the control of disputed territories and power-sharing on the national level have been on the rise between autonomous Kurds in northern Iraq and the country’s Shi’a-dominated government in the capital Baghdad.

In execution-style killings, the attackers in Anbar took all the men from the bus and drove them into the desert before shooting them. The 15 women and 12 children passengers were left to fend for themselves on the desert highway.

According to reports, the gunmen, who were wearing military-style uniforms, stopped the bus at a fake security checkpoint on a remote stretch of the highway in Anbar, part of Iraq’s Sunni heartland that saw some of the worst sectarian killings during the period of civil war following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Pictures and video footage taken by the survivors and the police and later released showed gruesome images of men shot in different parts of their bodies including their heads lying amid pools of blood in the desert.

Highway attacks on Shi’a pilgrims in Iraq have claimed thousands of lives since the toppling of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime following the U.S.-led invasion, which helped to empower the country’s majority Shi’a.

However, many Shi’a pilgrims traveling to and from Syria have been using the Anbar highways after Iraqi Awakening Councils, Sunni tribal militias set up by U.S. troops, assumed security duties in the province.

As news of the killings reached Karbala anger began to build and residents blamed the Iraqi government for failing to protect the pilgrims and arrest the perpetrators.

A military unit led by chairman of the Karbala provincial council Mohamed Al-Moussawi traveled some 300 kilometers along the Anbar highways two days later and arrested eight suspects in Rutba, the nearest town to the site of the massacre, causing outrage in Anbar.

The eight suspects were taken to Karbala and paraded before the crowds, infuriating Anbar leaders who accused al-Moussawi of “kidnapping” the suspects and acting like a gangster.

Hundreds of people took to the streets of towns across Anbar province to protest against the arrests, demanding that the suspects be returned if renewed sectarian tensions were to be avoided.

Ahmed Abu Risha, leader of the Anbar Awakening Councils, gave the Karbala authorities 24 hours to release the suspects and warned that his men would “cut off” the highway to Shi’a travelers.

Ali Hatim Al-Salman, an influential tribal chieftain in Anbar, reportedly also threatened to “chop off the hands” of members of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s Dawa Party, whom he accused of kidnapping the eight suspects.

Al-Moussawi said the original force had been made up of members of the Iraqi army and police force and that it had acted under orders from Al-Maliki in cooperation with the Anbar police force and helicopters dispatched from Baghdad.

Al-Maliki condemned the Anbar leaders’ statements as “irresponsible” and warned that they could lead to rising tensions between the Anbar and Karbala provinces.

Mohamed Bahr Al-Oloum, a Shi’a cleric, also lambasted the Anbar leaders for making fiery statements instead of protecting travelers on highways under their control.

The highway killings, together with the angry reactions they have ignited and the arrests that have followed, have underscored the fragile situation in Iraq and the failure of the Iraqi government to impose law and order.

They have also underlined how deeply divided Iraq’s religious sects and ethnicities are, eight years after the American occupation of the country and only four months before all U.S. combat troops are scheduled to withdraw from Iraq.

Fearing that escalating tensions over the latest incident could push the war-battered country into further instability and possibly even a new round of civil war, leaders on both sides of the sectarian divide later stepped back from their earlier fiery statements and tried to find a political exit from the crisis.

On Saturday, Al-Maliki ordered four suspects held after the attacks to be released because of a lack of evidence, with a further four kept in custody for further questioning.

He then sent a high-ranking delegation led by Defense Minister Saadoun Al-Dulaimi, himself originally from Anbar, to meet with local chiefs in an attempt to ease the tensions.

His military chief of staff, General Farouk Al-Araji, blamed Arab foreigners for the killings and accused other countries of trying to fuel sectarian tensions in the war-ravaged country.

Abu Risha, Al-Salman and other Anbar tribal chiefs traveled to Karbala to offer their condolences to the Shi’a population, promising to bring the perpetrators of the crime to justice.

However, Shi’a-Sunni divisions remained at street level, and the attacks have led to a flare up in sectarian suspicions.

While protesters in Rutba attacked army and police posts and demanded that the remaining four suspects be freed, families of the victims at their funerals in Karbala demanded justice for their slain relatives, with some threatening that they would take justice into their own hands in order to “reach the real criminals.”

Meanwhile, tensions are also running high between the authorities in the Kurdish-ruled region in the north of the country and the Baghdad government over a host of issues, with disputes nearly turning violent on several occasions in Diyala province.

Hundreds of Kurdish soldiers moved into disputed areas of the volatile province late last month, claiming they were providing security to Kurdish residents, with two battalions of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, about 1,300 soldiers, beginning patrols alongside the Iraqi army in Jalawla, a town of about 80,000 Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen just south of Diyala near the border with Iran.

The area is usually controlled by Iraqi police and soldiers, but recently Kurdish officials claimed that Kurds in the troubled region do not trust the Iraqi police and army, which are dominated by Arabs.

The situation has thus far remained calm, but in 2007 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were forced to leave the area to avoid a face-off with the Iraqi army.

Lingering disputes over territory, particularly in the area around the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, are considered to be potential flashpoints for future conflicts after U.S. troops depart at the end of this year under a 2008 bilateral security agreement.

Earlier this month, Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani called for U.S. forces to stay in Iraq beyond the end of the year deadline, underscoring the instability in northern Iraq.

The Baghdad and Kurdish governments are engaged in long-running feuds over other issues such as oil, the funding of the Peshmergas and control of national policy making.

Last week, oil exports from fields in Kurdistan were abruptly halted, apparently in reaction to the Baghdad government’s approval of a draft oil and gas law that Kurdish leaders had rejected.

The central government said that the halt would result in huge losses for the country’s economy, but refused to budge on the oil bill, which had already been submitted to parliament.

Any breakthrough in the oil dispute could remain elusive for a long time, raising tensions even higher.

Kurdish Prime Minister Barham Saleh put the problem between the two sides more bluntly when he told the Iraqi Asharqia television network on Sunday that the dispute was mostly about power-sharing with the central government.

Iraq remains almost more divided and desperate than ever, with last week’s Kurdish-Shi’a-Sunni tensions showing that a political crisis, a dispute over oil, or an attack on pilgrims could push the country over the brink. 

Al Ahram