WHITE HOUSE CONCEALED SCALE OF IRAQI KILLINGS AFTER MOSQUE BOMBING

Analysis by Gareth Porter

(IPS) WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration deliberately played down the seriousness of the threat of sectarian civil war in Iraq following the mass killings of Sunnis in revenge for the destruction of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, despite abundant evidence that even worse sectarian violence is certain to follow the next terrorist bombing.

The toll after a week of sectarian killing, mostly by Shiite militias in revenge for the Feb. 22 bombing of the Shiite Golden Dome, was 1,300 Iraqis, according to a report in the Washington Post on Feb. 28. That was three times greater than was reported by U.S. and Iraqi officials.

The administration's response to the killing was to launch a propaganda offensive to deny that the sectarian bloodletting presaged civil war and to claim that its existing policy was working.

National Security Adviser Stephen T. Hadley said on Feb. 26 that Iraqi leaders had "stared into the abyss" and had determined that sectarian violence was not in their interest. Hadley insisted that the administration's policy of "advancing the political agenda and continuing to train Iraqi security forces" would end terrorist attacks.

Two days later, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the danger of civil war had passed.

On Mar. 2, the spokesman for the U.S. command, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, suggested that the surge of killings of Sunnis in previous days "may be just another peak in violence and may not continue." The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey, declared, "It appears the crisis has passed..."

However, even as these officials were seeking to soothe the U.S. public about the threat of civil war, evidence available to them showed that both sides were girding for a much bloodier level of sectarian violence in the future.

Dozens of Sunni preachers had been killed, and Sunni leaders reported that 37 Sunni mosques had been destroyed and 86 more vandalized or damaged by grenades, rockets and gunfire as part of the Shiite retaliatory violence.

More importantly, the killings had prompted Sunnis to prepare for more serious violence in Baghdad and other mixed Sunni-Shi'a areas. Nancy Youssef of Knight-Ridder reported on Feb. 28 that Sunnis "across Central Iraq" were "alarmed at how easily Shiite forces had attacked their mosques."

Based on interviews with Sunnis in Fallujah and in Diyala province, Youssef wrote that they were now organising militias to fight Shiites in Baghdad and elsewhere, smuggling weapons into those areas and planning to preparing to send more fighters there in case of future attacks. Moqtadr al-Sadr said his militiamen had already captured Sunni weapons being infiltrated into the capital.

The implication of Youssef's reporting is that another bomb blast on a Shiite religious target by al Qaeda's operatives is almost certain to trigger sustained Sunni-Shiite fighting. Two such terrorist bombings have already been carried out this year.

The administration was particularly anxious to deny the approaching sectarian civil war because of the potentially troublesome fact that preventing such a war has not been its primary concern. Rather, Washington has continued to give top priority to its program of turning the war against Sunni insurgents over to primarily Shiite military units that nurse violent grudges against the Sunni population.

The sectarian implications of that policy were revealed in the bloody revenge killings of Sunnis last week. In an article in the New York Times Sunday John F. Burns quoted U.S. commanders as reporting that in Baghdad and elsewhere, units of the Iraqi Army "stood aside," allowing militia fighters loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr to carry out reprisal attacks against Sunnis.

The administration continues to argue that its political strategy is on track. In fact, administration officials were well aware that the possibility of a U.S.-brokered political agreement between Shiites and Sunnis under existing U.S. policy has virtually disappeared.

Not only have the talks on forming a new government deadlocked, but the Shiites have taken a hard line against making any concessions on their control over the means of state violence. .

Khalilzad had made repeated public threats that the United States would withdraw financial support from the Shiites if they did not give up their grip over sensitive security posts in the government. But Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari issued a pointed warning to the U.S. ambassador on Feb. 28 that he should back off from his high profile pressure on the Shiites in the negotiations.

Zebari, a Kurd who is a long-time supporter of the U.S. occupation, declared that such statements were being seen by Shiites as siding with Sunnis and would "backfire."

The Shiites have responded to U.S. pressure by digging in their heels on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's bid to continue in that position in the new government. The Kurds had joined with Sunnis and secular parties in opposing Jaafari, but the Shiite bloc has reaffirmed their support for him, with both Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and Moqtadr al-Sadr now behind his candidacy.

If the deadlock over the formation of new government persists, as now seems likely, it will certainly encourage both Sunnis and Shiites to hasten their preparations for civil war.

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has been arguing for months within the administration that the most important problem in Iraq is the clash between sectarian political groups. He had made precisely that point in a news conference on Feb. 21 -- the day before the bombing in Samarra.

The implication of such assertions, in the context of the present policy, is that Khalilzad believes that turning over the counterinsurgency war to a largely Shiite anti-Sunni army should be subordinated to the imperative of making peace between Sunnis and Shiites.

Sunni-Shiite tensions are inevitably heightened by both paramilitary operations by Shiite units in Sunni areas, which provide cover for anti-Sunni death squads. Negotiation of a general ceasefire involving Sunni insurgents, government security forces and occupation troops would provide a better atmosphere for negotiations on political issues.

But the Pentagon's interest in building up the Shiite and Kurdish military units has prevailed over Khalilzad's concerns, as noted in an article published last week in Foreign Affairs by Council on Foreign Relations fellow Stephen Biddle. Biddle notes that U.S. policy has been to "field an ethnically mixed Iraqi military as quickly as possible in order to replace U.S. troops," regardless of whether there is a new political understanding between Sunnis and Shiites.

Biddle calls for the "suspension" of the U.S. war against the Sunni insurgents as a way of supporting the effort to prevent civil war, marking the first time an establishment publication has broached the subject of making peace with the Sunni insurgent leaders.