Publication

This report is an attempt to address some of the issues associated with a potential ethic and sectarian war in Iraq. It assumes that the strategic implications of an Iraqi civil war are sufficiently serious as to warrant detailed consideration despite the fact that this is only one of many possibilities and not necessarily the most likely possibility for the future of Iraq. Serious ethno-religious conflict and especially a full-scale civil war in post-Saddam Iraq would present the US, the West, and the region with a variety of severe strategic problems. Such an outcome is only one of Iraq's potential futures, but a number of key observers have noted that such an Iraqi civil war is at least possible.