Civil War in Iraq - Potential Effects of The Sectarian Attacks

Potential Effects of The Sectarian Attacks

An article in The Washington Post, published on August 20, 2006, reported that a full-blown Iraq civil war might result in the death of hundreds of thousands of people and turn millions of people into refugees. The ethnic unrest could also spill over to the rest of the region, with "copycat secession attempts" in neighbouring countries, such as Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, as these countries have similar ethnic diversity. Citing the history of Taliban and Rwandan Patriotic Front as examples, the report warned that refugee camps often become a sanctuary and recruiting ground for militias, thus spreading the conflict to a wider area. Civil war could lead to increased radicalism and terrorism: Hezbollah and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were formed as a result of civil wars. Based on lessons learned from the Lebanese and Bosnian civil wars, the report predicted that if an all-out civil war were to break out in Iraq, the U.S.-led coalition would require 450,000 troops to quash it.

An article in The International Herald Tribune, published on November 26, 2006, paraphrased a report from a group of American professors at Stanford University that the insurgency in Iraq amounted to the classic definition of a civil war.