This was one of the question brought up by an audience member last night at the PSL debates. Essentially, the question had to do with the Sunni Muslims and the Shiite Muslims and the nature of Iraq's civil war, and I felt the two minutes alotted to both panels was not adequate time to explain the history, nature and current make up of the conflict and how it affects US policy and nation building in the region.

First, let's address the history of the two factions. The divide between the two seems largely superficial on the surface. Both sides hold the Koran as the sacred book, both observe the five tenents of Islam, and to outsiders, both sects prefer to be identified not as Sunnis or Shiites, but simply as Muslim. The split between the two, as Ryan said, came from the death of the Prophet Muhammed, and the subsequent political struggle to decide who would lead the believers of Islam. The Shiites originated from the supporters of Shiat-Ali, Muhammed's cousin and son-in-law. They believe that the only ones fit to rule Islam are those who are directly related to Muhammed. On the other hand, the Sunnis were the followers of Abu Bakr, and they believed that anyone with the necessary merit and/or conviction could and should rule Islam.

These factions, therefore, are largely political divisions in a religious institution, not that dissimilar to the split between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches in the Christian tradition. The nature of the conflict in Iraq, therefore, is not a "tribal" conflict as panelists on both sides maintained, but an ethnic conflict. While that might seem to be splitting hairs, the difference between the two are numerous and important. A tribal conflict is what occurs in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan and India. It is a largely political conflict between numerous small, largely independent factions. The wars are often localized with people quickly, and frequently, switching sides and making brief alliances. This is not the case with Iraq.

Iraq, as it currently stands, is embroiled in what can only be defined as an ethnic conflict - and one that had no past precedence in the country. Before the United States invaded Iraq, the Muslims in Iraq were largely an unified force. Although the Sunnis had a monopoly on power, there were numerous instances of cooperation and intermarriage between the two sides. Unlike previous large scale ethnic conflicts in the past, such as that between the Tutsi and the Hutus in Rwanda, the current Civil War in Iraq really has no past precedence. Before the United States wrested the power from the Sunnis, there were no history of wide-spread conflicts between the two, and although Saddam did repress several Shiite religious celebrations (a trait that he shared with the governments of Democracies like Turkey and allies like Kuwait and Saudia Arabia), the Shiite and Sunnis largely experience a peace coexistance.

So in reality, the current conflict is not a long, drawn out affair with its roots in the annuls of history. Rather, the conflict is about one thing and one thing only - power. The ability to rule, and the Sunni's fear that a Shiite-led Iraq will become more fundamentalist, like its neighbor (and fellow Shiite majority nation) Iran. When the formal war between the US and Iraq ended and the actual process of nation building began, the United States acted rashly in wresting the power away from what it viewed as the legacy of Baathist Iraq - the Sunni. The result was that it suddenly left a people who were always used to power (the Sunni) out in the proverbial cold while a faction who has been historically more fundamentalist and subjegated (the Shiites) suddenly found themselves in control. The results were predictable - the Sunnis didn't want to relinquish power and the Shiites didn't want to share it. The result is the current state of Iraq right now, where the words Sunni and Shi'ite are no longer just define the religious sects - they have come to mean Baathists vs. anti-Baathists, conservatives vs. liberals, fundamentalists vs. moderates.

Iraq is being divided before our eyes and the two constants in this conflict are power and the United States. The United States' current policy is to support whichever faction retains control in their respective regions - a stratagey that lowers American casualties, but one that will continue to divide Iraq. More importantly, religious and political leaders on both sides are using the US and its involvement as a rallying cry for their followers. As a result, the Sunni Al-Qaeda and the Shi'ite Hezbollah have both been strengthened in Iraq and have laid the groundwork for what we have long feared - a terrorist haven with large oil reserves. This is the nature of the conflict in Iraq, it isn't some esoteric, long-brewing conflict with historical implications - it is a simple division between those who had power and want it back and those who have power and refuse to relinquish it. Add in a flimsy economy, a crippled infrastructure and a large foreign hegemon, and the result is simple and sadly predictable - an ethnic conflict, and one that will be extremely hard and extremely taxing to diffuse.

That said, I don't think it's fair to blame the conflict on purely American intervention. Those who hunger for power will always find a way to try to curb it, and in the case of Iraq, their weapon of choice were ethnic divisions. And although I do believe that a more thurough understanding of Muslim divisions and the nature of the Sunni/Shi'ite divide in Iraq would certainly have mitigated a lot of the worst parts of the conflict, it's not entirely fair to say that some research and a couple of sit-down sessions with informed clerics and intellectuals would have completely adverted disaster. What is not excusable, however, is our lack of knowledge of the tensions and even the most shallow of ethnic divisions within a nation who we planned on making into a beacon for Democracy. As a Current History article written by University of Chicago professor Augustus Richard Norton explains:

"It is no exaggeration to say that US leaders were completely surprised by some of the challenges that have emerged from the Iraq War. In a remarkable encounter in January, 2003, two months before the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, members of the Iraqi opposition were meeting in the Oval Office with George W. Bush. Kanan Mikaya, an Iraqi-American academic began speaking about Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, but Bush interrupted him, puzzled: "I thought they were all Muslims."

Bush would not make the same mistake today, but considerable confusion about the two major sects of Islam persists. Senior US Homeland Security officials, for example, have been documented referring to Al-Qaeda as a Shiite group; it is infact dogmatically anti-Shiite. In capitol hill hearings, Congressmen are on record using "Palestinian" as a synonym for Shiite, though there are almost no Palestinian Shiites." 

The failure to understand the ethnic divisions in Iraq has cost us badly. In order to truly build a lasting Democracy, the ever-widening gulf between the two factions must be bridged. Unfortunately, current US policy and US visible military presence have had largely the opposite effect. I'm not sure how anyone would repair this mess now, but whoever wins the presidency in 2008 must have a clear, concise, and logical plan that are free from the historical biases that riddled the Bush rebuilding effort. This is the only way to stem this ethnic conflict before it becomes a full dress civil war.