civil war possible

CIA sounds alarm on civil war risk

23jan04

CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country may be on a path to civil war.

Yesterday's warning starkly contradicts the upbeat assessment given by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address earlier this week.

The CIA officers' bleak assessment was delivered verbally to Washington, said officials.

The warning echoed growing fears that Iraq's Shiite majority, which has until now grudgingly accepted the US occupation, could turn to violence if its demands for direct elections are spurned.

Meanwhile, Iraq's Kurdish minority is pressing its demand for autonomy and shares of oil revenue. "Both the Shiites and the Kurds think that now's their time," said one intelligence officer.

"They think that if they don't get what they want now, they'll probably never get it. Both feel they've been betrayed by the United States before."

These dire scenarios were discussed at meetings this week by Mr Bush, his top national security aides and the chief US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer.

Another senior official said the concerns of a civil war were not confined to the CIA.

They were "broadly held within the Government," including by regional experts at the State Department and National Security Council.

Top officials are scrambling to save the US exit strategy after concluding that Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al Husseini al Sistani, is unlikely to drop his demand for elections for an interim assembly that would choose an interim government by June 30.

The CIA has not yet put its officers' warnings about a potential Iraqi civil war in writing, but the senior official said he expected a formal report "momentarily".

"In the discussion with Bremer in the last few days, several very bad possibilities have been outlined," he said.

Mr Bush, in his State of the Union address, insisted that an insurgency against the US occupation, conducted primarily by minority Sunni Muslims, who enjoyed power under Saddam Hussein, "will fail, and the Iraqi people will live in freedom".