madman31

In recent days, President Bush has come under some fire by scholars and pundits alike by saying that Iraq was NOT currently engaged in a civil war. But how do we know this? Factions within Iraq have been fighting against one another for months now.

Egypt President Hosni Mubarak, however, went on record by sayting that Iraq in fact WAS on the brink of civil war.

So this has gotten me thinking about what exactly encompasses civil war, and whether or not Iraq qualifies.

While the name itself is somewhat oxymoronic, a war is civil when (1) the warring factions are in the same country and (2) when those factions are vying for political control of that country. One of the things that separates a civil war from an internal war is that the objectives in a civil war are political. Internal wars deal with ethnic or religious differents that are not directly political.

There are a lot of other caveats that many scholars add. For example:

*The violence between factions must be prolonged

*The factions must be defined regionally

* The objects must be clear

But as the definition of war has changed in recent years, I think we can omit these extras, at least for now.

So let's go back to our original two criteria here. The factions involved are Sunni and Shiite muslims (as well as Kurds and a few smaller groups to a lesser extent), all of which operate within the confines of Iraq. So the differences between the groups are religious, which doesn't always qualify as being political. But in this case, it is about the future of Iraq and which religous group will have majority say in that future. So by my definition to this point, the war in Iraq is in fact civil.

At this time, I need to talk about insurgencies, because this is a word used to describe Iraq as well. An insurgency is an organized rebellion that engages in deliberate actions to cause the downfall of a governmental authority, through destruction and armed actions. Insurgents are in opposition to a civil authority or government primarily in order to overthrow or obtain a share in government, to further a separatist or revolutionary agenda, or improve their condition.

So are insurgencies civil wars? Most historians would tell you that insurgencies are civil only if they engage in conventional forms of warfare. By conventional, we mean uniformed troops, traditional military tactics, and the like. Clearly this is not happening in Iraq, and this is the justification president Bush uses for saying that Iraq is not in the midst of a civil war.

But I don't buy what the historians say. not any more. The days of the conventional war are waning. Operation Desert Storm was arguably one of its last gasps. Armies around the world, even the most advanced ones, are more and more using unconventional tactics, to the point where it is becoming the norm.

So the key to identifying civil wars is the objective, not the tactics. Are the objectives in Iraq political? Yes. Do said objectives invlolve a deligitimization of government? Certainly. Is a goal a changing of the government? More than likely yes.

What we have here is a civil insurgency--one that carries on the characteristics of both kinds of wars.

So Bush is half wrong and half right, which is about par for the course