On the ground in Iraq

Just a day after the bombing of a key Shiite holy site, the Al-Askariya mosque in Samarra (also known as the Golden Mosque), and in the wake of reprisal killings of Sunnis, Iraq's leading Sunni party, the Sunni Accord Front, "announced it is leaving political unity talks after meeting with Talabani and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari," according to CNN.

For more, see The Washington Post: "A wave of sectarian strife and recrimination swept Iraq Thursday after Wednesday's bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra. The Interior Ministry said that more than 100 people have been killed in the violence... Officials in Baghdad, struggling to restore order, expanded an existing curfew in an effort to get people off the streets after dark and canceled all leaves for Iraqi security forces."

Meanwhile, according to Juan Cole: "The shoe seems to be on the other foot now, with Muqtada al-Sadr attempting to cool Iraq's Shiites down and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani threatening to create a paramilitary to protect Shiites."

Iraq the Model is on the ground in Iraq and has these observations:

-- "Today is a day off in Iraq, emergency situation now officially declared with extended curfews 8pm-6am."

-- "Sistani has been calling for restraint and calm but it seems that some Shia factions are not listening to him but instead they are listening to their direct references or acting on their own."

-- "Baghdad looks more alive today but in a very cautious way, traffic in the streets is heavier than it was yesterday but still way below normal. There's some kind of shopping frenzy because people are trying to be prepared if the worst happens; people are stock-piling small reserves of food, cigarettes, bottled water, etc., especially after they heard some of the roads to/from Baghdad are closed and vehicles were turned away."

-- "The situation is still very tense but the good thing is that the Sunni have not returned the attacks and I hope the Shia have satisfied their vengeance by now because I don't want to even think of what can happen if this situation lasts longer than this."

All this is must reading.

We can debate whether Iraq is on the verge of civil war, whether a civil war is underway, or whether such concerns are simply overblown. To a certain extent, this may just be a matter of semantics. But, clearly, thesituationn isn't secure and the country, or parts of it at least, seem to be teetering on the edge of a slippery slope into all-out chaos.

Whatever my various critiques of the Iraq War, in particular of Bush's handling of it, let's hope that the "nightmare," as Andrew Sullivan puts it, doesn't become reality.