Nearly eight times as many Iraqis died last month in execution-style sectarian killings as in terrorist bombings carried out by insurgents, new US military statistics show.

Until now, the Sunni-led insurgency was seen as the greatest threat to US plans in Iraq, killing hundreds and at times more than 1,000 Iraqi civilians per month. But the new figures suggest that the Shi’ite militias, loyal to powerful Shi’ite politicians, are poised to become as great a threat to Iraq’s security.

The military said 1,313 Iraqi civilians perished in sectarian murders in March, compared with 173 killed in suicide bombings. The victims, an average of 36 per day, included Sunni men found with holes drilled through their heads and Shi’ite men with the words “traitor” written or carved across their bodies. ~Boston.com

Via Antiwar

It might be helpful to keep in mind that after 2,000 people had died in one year of insurgency and counterinsurgency in Kosovo, the media dubbed it not only a “civil war” without any hesitation but also “genocide.” There followed the NATO bombing, in which more than twice as many as had died in the previous year were killed by NATO forces in two months–this was what some call progress.

What is happening in Iraq is, of course, not “genocide” or anything like it, but it is obviously now a civil war without any qualification. The “good news” (and who says that the media doesn’t report the good news from Iraq?) in this grisly tale is that American fatalities are declining as the Iraqis turn on each other. At this rate, American deaths will fall to zero and there will just be Iraqis massacring Iraqis. Somehow that does cast a bit of a pall on the allegedly noble cause for which all those Americans have died.

For the record, this is almost always what happens whenever sectarian, tribal or regional identities are politicised and the groups in question begin contesting mass political power. Democratising such socieities is and always has been a recipe for violence, civil disorder and slaughter. Most democratic polities are or quickly become entirely illiberal (and also often quickly collapse into despotism of one kind or another) because powerful pre-existing group identities are the most successful vehicles for mobilising political support and manpower and the claims of these groups almost always trump the requirements of a liberal order. (By the way, there is rarely a happy period of sustainable liberal democracy, as liberalism invokes the powers of mass politics that quickly sweep away the restraint and limitations a liberal order imposes on democratic forces.) That is incidentally why the genuinely committed democratists usually despise the claims of tradition, religion, ethnicity and history, because these perfectly natural and good affinities are impediments to the manipulation of the deracinated mob and the exercise of mass power. It is also why those who value tradition, religion, history and ethic heritage should be very wary of, if not hostile to, democracy and plans for democratising other nations.

It is telling that the label of civil war has never seemed to be difficult for the media or pundits to apply to the Balkans, because according to the official story “we” were coming to the rescue to “end” the “civil war,” be it is Bosnia or Kosovo (in reality, “we” were coming to make sure that the side most hostile to the Serbs won).

In Iraq, no such lie about America intervening to stop the civil war can be successfully propagated, because it was our invasion that made the civil war possible and it was our invasion and post-invasion policy, if so it may be dignified with a sense of coherence and planning, that empowered the very Shi’ite thugs who are now running amok. Guaranteed minority rights, the rule of law, and all of the non-democratic trappings that might make a democratic polity tolerable, and the only things that make the export of “democracy” anything other than a crime against the recipients of this gift of dubious value, will not survive in a climate where sectarian supremacy is the goal.