al-Zarqawi's death may not stop slide to civil war

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi raised hopes that Iraq's slide toward civil war or sectarian disintegration could be arrested, but there are signs that Shiite-Sunni antagonism may now be too deeply rooted.

Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Sunni Muslim, played a key role in stoking Shiite-Sunni tensions the past three years, ordering hundreds of bloody attacks against Iraqi Shiites and issuing vitriolic tirades seeking to deepen a religious schism that dates back 1,400 years.

On Sunday, his feared terror group, al-Qaida in Iraq, said there would be no let up in its combat operations.

It vowed in an Internet statement "to prepare major attacks that will shake the enemy like an earthquake and rattle them out of sleep."

Gen. George Casey, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said he took the threat seriously, but suggested a surge in al-Qaida rhetoric also was evidence that the insurgency is "hurting."

"Now, that said ... it still has the capability to generate terrorist attacks across Iraq," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

It is not just al-Qaida playing on the religious divide.

On Saturday, the Mujahedeen Shura Council -- five allied groups in the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency -- sent an Internet condolence message for al-Zarqawi's death that echoed the former al-Qaida chieftain's hatred for Shiites.

"As for you the slaves of the cross (U.S.-led coalition forces), the grandsons of Ibn al-Alqami (Shiites), and every infidel of the Sunnis, we can't wait to sever your necks with our swords," council leader Abdullah bin Rashid al-Baghdadi wrote.

The specter of civil war or a breakup of Iraq has grown steadily since shortly after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 ousted Saddam Hussein, which allowed the long-oppressed Shiite majority to assume dominance over minority Sunni Arabs who had run the country for decades.

Sunnis, embittered over their loss of power and status, formed a variety of insurgent groups, although it was al-Zarqawi who grabbed international prominence in the fight to drive U.S.-led troops out of Iraq.

In time, his organization added Shiite Muslim civilians to its target list, killing thousands and, on Feb. 22, desecrating a major Shiite shrine. The latter set off a storm of increasing sectarian violence that has shown no sign of slowing since al-Zarqawi was killed Wednesday by two 500-pound bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes.

Baghdad, a mixed city of 6 million people that once enjoyed a reputation for tolerance, has become a sectarian battleground. It slowly is becoming a divided city, with the Tigris River marking the front line between Shiites and Sunnis.

"This is what the terrorists wanted," Khaled al-Attiyah, a senior Shiite politician and deputy parliament speaker, told The Associated Press.

Iraq's army, controlled by the Sunni-led Defense Ministry, is mainly deployed on the western bank where most of the capital's Sunni Arab neighborhoods are. Police forces, which report to the Shiite-led Interior Ministry, are primarily in Shiite areas on the eastern side.

Shiites living in predominantly Sunni areas, like the city's insurgent strongholds of Dora and Amriyah, are moving out, going to districts where their sect is the majority or even to the mainly Shiite south of Iraq. Sunnis, meanwhile, are leaving Shiite neighborhoods.

Iraqis are on the move elsewhere, too. Sunnis are abandoning the Shiite-dominated southern city of Basra in droves. Some Shiites are leaving overwhelmingly Sunni areas to the northeast, south and north of Baghdad.

There are particularly few Shiites left in Anbar, the huge province west of Baghdad that is a bastion of the Sunni insurgency.

Another alarming sign is that Shiites and Sunnis have stopped a centuries-old practice of occasionally praying at each other's mosques, fearing the risk of venturing into the territory of the other side. Iraqis can tell Shiite from Sunni by name, accent or clan.

Shiites also have begun to shun naming newborn males Abu Bakr, Omar or Othman, 7th century successors of the Prophet Muhammad that Shiites view as having usurped Islam's leadership from Imam Ali, the prophet's cousin and their most revered saint.

Sheik Gamal Abdul-Rahman, a Sunni mosque imam in Baghdad's al-Jama'a district, told worshippers Friday of an incident in which a man named his new son Omar. The father, Abdul-Rahman claimed, received a note that said: "To the infidel Abu (father of) Omar ... leave the land of Ali's Shiites or you will die."

Some Sunni high school students complain of harassment by Shiite classmates if they have typically Sunni names like Omar or Othman. At Baghdad's universities, students speak of the student bodies splintering into sectarian camps.

"We are not yet at civil war -- but we have all the ingredients of one," said Mustafa al-Ani, an Iraqi analyst who lives in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.