[RickSp]

Obviously, we can all only guess. My gut feeling is that civil war can be avoided for a number of reasons.

- Iraq has been secular since it was created after WWII. Notwithstanding Sunni dominace, the Shi'ites as led by Ayatollah Sistani are more secular than the Iranian Shi'a or Muslims in general in the Middle East. Sistani is a conservative, to be sure, but not a fundamentalist. On balance the Shi'ites gain more from a democratic unified Iraq than from a partitioned Iraq.

- The Kurds are effectively autonomous already. The Kurdish regions are reasonably peaceful and well governed. As long as they are allowed to retain a degree of autonomy, they are much better protected in a unified Iraq than in an independent Kurdish state, where they might be vulnerable to invasion or at least military action by Turkey. So far the terms of the draft government give the Kurds at veto power. That could be enough to keep the Kurds supporting a unified Iraq.

-The Shia who were the administrators under the Ottoman Empire and then were given the same power by the British occupiers and took power under the Baathist party, have the most to lose. Under Saddam the Baath party had three million members across the country. Who knows how many would actively oppose a democratic Iraq. Estimates are that half the insurgents are jihadists and half are Baathist. It is unclear how many are simply nationalist. How many will lay down their arms or even switch sides when the infidel occupier finally leaves the country? The longer we stay the greater the justification that the insurgents will have to continue fighting. Once the infidel is gone, the insurgents may lose traction.

As long as the Shi'ites and the Kurds have an incentive to stay in a unified Iraq they may be able to buy off the Sunnis with some sort of power sharing arrangement. I think the wild card is the occupation. The US so completely screwed up the early stages of the occupation by stupidity and incompetence, that we may yet foul things up sufficiently so as to make a unifed Iraq impossible.

Of course nobody knows. Time will tell.