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In turn, fanatical Shi'ites regard Sunnis as descendants and followers of the murderers of their most revered heroes. That resentment culminated in the rule of Saddam, who outlawed important Shi'ite observances, had many top Shi'ite clerics murdered and finally, after the first Gulf War, ordered a massive campaign of murder and repression of Shi'ites. Now politically ascendant, some Shi'ites want reckoning for those and other historical wrongs. They regard the assassination of Sunnis by death squads as eye-for-an-eye justice. Even some moderate Shi'ites, who condemn extrajudicial killings, view Sunnis as deluded losers who are supporting terrorist groups in a futile bid to regain their monopoly on power.
Yet the two sides have more in common than they openly admit. Iraq's Arab Shi'ites and Sunnis come from the same ethnic stock (the Kurds, a different ethnic group, tend to be Sunni) and share the same language and diet. They even dress alike, although Shi'ites have a special fondness for black, a color associated with one of their historic heroes. From appearance alone, a Shi'ite would not be able to identify a Sunni on the streets of Baghdad any more than a Catholic would be able to point out a Protestant in the U.S.
Indeed, what makes the rise of sectarian violence so chilling is precisely the difficulty involved in carrying it out. Some Shi'ite mobs last week stopped people in the street and demanded to see their ID cards, looking for Sunni names. Each sect regards some names as taboo, usually because they are associated with hated figures from history. But that too is imprecise: the vast majority of Muslim names are used by both sects. In the end, as is often the case in sectarian wars, many of the victims of last week's violence were simply fingered by their neighbors.
Can a country in which neighbors are ratting one another out to bloodthirsty mobs drag itself back from the brink of civil war? Iraq has done so before. In the summer of 2004, when al-Sadr's fighters battled U.S. forces in several cities, Iraqi leaders warned of a potential Shi'ite insurgency. In the end, the Mahdi Army was cornered, and Sistani ordered the fighters to go home. But taking a beating from an overwhelmingly superior force of foreigners is one thing. It is hard to see either Shi'ites or Sunnis backing down from a more evenly balanced sectarian fight, if only because the burden of history makes it impossible for either side to admit defeat.
Given the failure to head off last week's conflagration, U.S. hopes of averting an ignominious defeat in Iraq now hinge on whether it can bring the fighting to an end. The biggest fear is that the breakdown of order could draw neighboring countries into the conflict, with Iran intervening on behalf of the Shi'ites and Arab states supporting the Sunnis. Some U.S. military officers say privately that the turmoil has vindicated their insistence that it's premature to turn over security duties to the Iraqis. "This week's events support our caution and unwillingness to pull out troops too quickly," says a senior military officer. "The civilian leadership wants us to move faster, faster, but it's a little bit of 'We told you so.'"