Family's tragedy tells of Iraq's divide

An envelope holding a single bullet was waiting on their doorstep.

There was no need for a note. Everyone in town knows what it means: Leave or the next time it could be a bomb or a gunman coming to call.

When the message arrived for the al-Sihaili family, they didn't hesitate. They set off Tuesday from their home northeast of Baghdad to join relatives in the Shiite-dominated south.

They left in such a rush they forgot to shut the front gate.

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Day by day, Iraq's map is being redrawn along Sunni-Shiite lines. Gangs from both sides _ including Shiite death squads and al-Qaida inspired Sunni radicals _ have waged a nasty war-within-a-war for territory they can call their own.

It's left cemeteries full of fresh graves, helped to displace millions of people and perhaps laid down the front lines for sectarian strife for years to come. Areas where Sunnis and Shiites once lived side by side _ such as parts of Baghdad _ are now a patchwork of boundaries that few dare to cross.

Except with deadly intent.

Every day in Baghdad and elsewhere, bodies turn up _ often handcuffed and showing signs of torture _ blamed on the work of Shiite hit men. In return, suspected Sunni car bombs, suicide missions and mortar strikes hit mostly Shiite targets.

In February, 1,646 civilians were killed across Iraq, a Health Ministry official said. That's down from January's tally of 1,990 civilian deaths, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allow to release internal figures.

The February count by The Associated Press is 1,698 civilians killed and 1,911 in January. The United Nations and other groups often place the civilian death count far higher.

The Sunni-Shiite rivalries reach back to a fight for leadership after the Prophet Muhammad's death in the 7th century. Saddam Hussein turned it into a modern blood feud. He favored his fellow Sunnis and kept the majority Shiites under a tight lid _ which grew even tighter after the last failed Shiite uprising following the 1991 Gulf War. The result was a Potemkin peace that collapsed along with Saddam.

Iraq's sectarian divorce appears to be reaching a kind of institutional permanence. Each group is building its own separate structures right up to clinics and hospitals. No one trusts the other will let them come out alive.

"And there's nothing to suggest this trend is reversing," said Dana Graber, who follows Iraq for the International Office for Migration _ a Geneva-based group whose latest report on Iraq estimated up to 1 million people could flee violence and intimidation this year alone.

Already about 4 million Iraqis are displaced within the country or are refugees abroad, mostly Sunnis who fled to neighboring Syria or Jordan, international agencies estimate.

The new epicenter is a place once hailed as the "little Iraq" for its overlap of the country's three main groups: Sunnis, Shiites and the northern Kurds. But that's ending. Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, has been increasingly overrun by Sunni insurgents. It's part of a strategic retrenching to avoid a new U.S.-led security crackdown in Baghdad, military officials say.

Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, the U.S. military official in northern Iraq, said the fight for Diyala is "as important to Sunnis as control of Baghdad." Added Capt. Paul Carlock _ with a touch of understatement _ after a series of bold daylight barrages on his 1st Cavalry Division: "It's been pretty violent."

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Families like the al-Sihaili clan are caught helplessly in the middle.

They sped away from home with whatever they could cram in a three-vehicle convoy. The first car was filled with all five al-Sihaili brothers. Behind them: two minibuses with their wives and 13 children.

The left Balad Ruz and drove south through the night. Just before dawn, the convoy was nearing Suwayrah, about 25 miles southeast of Baghdad. The Tigris River was to their right and the green plains leading to ancient Babylon. The family's relatives were preparing breakfast for their expected arrival in a few minutes.

Just then, a roadside bomb blew the brothers' Toyota into three smoking pieces. They were all dead, said Maamoun Ajil al-Robaiei, a director at the morgue in nearby Kut.

A hail of metal shrapnel peppered the trailing minibuses, wounding most of the wives and children, said officials at Suwayrah's hospital.

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Back in Diyala province, a Shiite imam wondered about his orange trees and the home taken over by a Sunni family.

Ahmed Hamad al-Tamimi said he was forced out of the mixed village of Quba two years ago after insurgents blew up his mosque. He hasn't set foot in a Sunni-held area since.

"There's another (Sunni) family living in my house. They took over my groves," he said in the Shiite town of Huwayder near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. "I don't know who they are."

He claimed Sunni groups have "kicked out 100 percent of the Shiite families in some areas" of the province. His village is moving in that direction, too, he said, shrugging.

"It's engraved in my heart that I'll go back one day," he said. "But conditions must change."

Agencies monitoring the population shifts are not optimistic.

Last month in Geneva, a spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, said "the numbers of people that are being displaced are increasing every day." Jemini Pandaya went on to add: "The security situation is not improving. It's not changing."

Madeline Garlick, a spokeswoman for the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, called the humanitarian situation in Iraq "grave and deteriorating."

The Iraqi leaders of the Baghdad security crackdown, now in its third week, say that hundreds of families have crossed the sectarian lines and returned home in the capital. But that's only half the story, believes Graber of the IOM.

She said the group's research indicates people have returned only to check on their properties and assess the neighborhood security. "Very few have really gone back for good," she said.

A recent IOM survey, obtained by the AP, found overwhelming anxiety over sectarian troubles. In Iraq's biggest mixed Sunni-Shiite areas, more than 90 percent of those questioned said they felt targeted because of their sect.

In the Baghdad area, 78 percent said they fled their homes because of "direct threats to life." In Diyala, it rose to 93 percent.

But some still try to reach out across the growing divide.

On Thursday, a new Sunni group calling itself the Iraqi Scholars Union invited Shiite professors to hold meetings on Iraq's political future.

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The bodies of the al-Sihaili brothers were buried in Suwayrah. The families feared they could face attacks if the funeral procession headed home.

Their names are carved on Shiite-style grave slabs set side by side: Alaa, a paramedic; and his brothers who worked at the Balad Ruz water department _ Hameed, Abid, Hadi and Jamal. Nearby are the unmarked graves of execution-style victims found floating in the Tigris.

There was not much of a formal investigation into the accident. The road they traveled is a known suicide alley of makeshift mines _ called in Pentagon jargon improvised explosive devices, or IEDs _ the biggest killer of U.S. troops in Iraq.

But "there is no question" that civilians are often their victims, said Navy Lt. Michael D. Dovilla, an intelligence officer with Task Force Troy, a counter-IED unit.

The roadside bombs _ mostly rigged with mortar shells, land mines and anti-aircraft rounds _ are constantly evolving on how they are hidden and triggered. Some are set off remotely and others are detonated by the first vehicle to cross their path.

The bomb that killed the brothers could have been intended for U.S. troops or Iraqi forces.

It could have been placed by the powerful Shiite Mahdi Army, which has been the target of recent U.S. raids around Suwayrah that the military claims have disrupted several bomb-making cells.

No one will ever know.

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Associated Press reporters Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad and Lauren Frayer in Diyala contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

International Organization for Migration: http://www.iom.net