To read reports of the continuing violence in Iraq is to risk a bad case of dej? vu. Each time the violence either spikes or ebbs, the media appear, on the one hand, shocked anew at the volume and ferocity of the killing, or, on the other hand, cautiously optimistic that the insurgency may be faltering.
As a result of this trend-heavy groupthink, we’ve seen the coverage of the war fall into a somewhat predictable cyclical pattern, where current stories read almost exactly like the ones we read a few months — or at this point even years — ago.
The New York Times runs once such article today, which seems at first glance to offer a fresh angle, describing the violence in Iraq as “civil war,” — or at least alluding to it as “sectarian” killing. The piece notes that “amid violence that has taken more than 550 lives across Iraq this month, [there is] renewed concern that the bloodshed may be shifting ever more toward crudely sectarian killings.”
Truth be told, the idea that the violence in Iraq is devolving into a civil war is nothing new. In fact, intelligence analysts, military officials and U.S. Senators have been warning of civil war for quite some time. It’s just that at the moment the Times, and a few other news outlets, are circling back to the premise as if it were a fresh one.
The AP floated the civil war theory on May 16, asking in a headline, “‘Insurgents’ violence a bid for civil war?” Four days earlier, the San Jose Mercury News had gotten on board with the new meme, writing that, “several experts said the country is either on the verge of civil war or already in the middle of it.” (The paper betrays its own coverage here, in admitting that it doesn’t know if this is a new development, or just one that has somehow been ignored.)
Reuters, for its part, took a slightly different tack on the story, implicitly admitting that Sunni/Shia violence is a topic that hasn’t been parsed as closely in the American media as it should have been, and noting on April 26 that civil war is “a phrase everyone in Iraq has strenuously avoided for the past two years.”
That’s not entirely true, and betrays a short memory. While some may have ignored evidence of the increasingly religious and ethnic undertones of the fighting in Iraq, the phenomenon and stories about it have been out there since just after the fall of Baghdad. Just a few examples:
— A Knight Ridder story from January 2004 — almost a year and a half ago — which noted that “CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country may be on a path to civil war.”
— Two months later, at an appearance before the House Armed Services Committee in Washington, the Pentagon’s senior officer in Iraq, General John Abizaid said it was “possible” Iraq could descend into civil war. Admittedly, he added that “While I say it is possible, I do not believe it is probable. I am optimistic that we have a chance, but it is not a 100 per cent chance.” A year later, in March 2005, he reiterated to Jim Lehrer that “I think a civil war is possible if everything goes exactly wrong.”
— In April 2004, the BBC reported that Democratic Senator Joe Biden talked “of the real prospect of civil war” in Iraq, while Republican Senator Richard Lugar echoed his sentiments.
— In another story from December 2004, UPI quoted an unnamed CIA source as saying that reports of ethnic cleansing of Arabs by Kurds in the north is “taking place off everyone’s radar, and it’s very quiet, but it’s happening.”
— From the beginning of the insurgency, according to UPI, sectarian and ethnic groups have been “quietly at war,” another unnamed U.S. intelligence official told the news service.
Obviously, some of this is a question of semantics. Just how we determine what counts as civil war and what doesn’t has never to our knowledge been codified, by either the press or the military. So we’re certainly not demanding that newspapers start unequivocally using the term to describe what we’ve got in Iraq. The fact of the matter is, whatever name you put to it won’t stop the killing. But what we would like to see is a little less shock at what seems obvious enough with even a cursory glance at the days headlines: The violence in Iraq has long since moved away from being a solely military conflict and has become one where Sunni attacks Shia and Shia respond, with both Iraqis and U.S. troops caught in the middle.
Call it “sectarian violence,” call it “ethnic conflict,” call it “civil war.” But do us a favor: Just start consistently recognizing that it is happening, instead of expressing surprise at finding it all over again a few months down the road.
Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.