Iraq’s house divided

THE FIG LEAF that Iraq has a fledgling but functioning government that stands between its sectarian strife and full-scale civil war was blown away in a raging political storm this week. It’s now clear that not only is Iraq’s government incapable of controlling events on the ground, the warring Sunni and Shiite-controlled ministries can’t even agree on what is happening beyond their walls. The fragile coexistence of Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq’s new parliament is in peril.

The United States has made securing Baghdad the cornerstone of its new military strategy, but a mass kidnapping in broad daylight Tuesday from the Sunni-controlled Ministry of Higher Education showed that the plan, so far, has failed.

In the days following the abductions, Sunni and Shiite Cabinet ministers offered utterly contradictory accounts of how many people were kidnapped from the ministry, how many hostages had been released and whether any of them had been tortured.

Then, instead of cracking down on Shiite death squads operating under cover of law inside his ministry, Interior Minister Jawad Bolani announced Thursday that he had issued an arrest warrant for one of Iraq’s most popular Sunni clerics, Harith Dhari, on a charge of inciting violence. On Friday, Sunni mosques echoed with angry denunciations of the decision. Sunni lawmakers, who hold 44 of 275 seats in parliament, are threatening to walk out and take up arms against the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki. Officials close to Maliki quickly caved, insisting that Maliki hadn’t known of the warrant and promising not to execute it.

Dhari is an unrepentant rejectionist, a supporter of Saddam Hussein who led a Sunni boycott of the Iraqi elections and who is believed by many to be inciting violence against Shiites. Still, the remarkably ill-timed decision by the Maliki government (if that term still has any meaning) to arrest him is tantamount to challenging the Sunnis to walk out and make war. It’s also a slap at U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been trying for months to get the Shiites and Sunnis to negotiate.

If the Iraqi sects are determined to destroy their new government and fight it out, the U.S. will be unable to stop them. But that would be a terrible disaster for all involved. The international community must do everything in its power to try to broker Sunni-Shiite peace talks now.