BAGHDAD: Iraqi leaders are now saying exactly what their deadliest enemy, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, may want to hear — Iraq faces a real threat of civil war. The destruction of Shia shrines of Imam Hassan Askari and Imam Ali Naqi plunged post-war Iraq into its deepest crisis, setting off a furious wave of sectarian violence that claimed more than 200 lives.

Iraqi leaders, from Kurdish President Jalal Talabani to Shia Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and Sunni Defence Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, scrambled to avert what they had no hesitation in describing as the danger of civil war.

Iraqi officials say that Zarqawi, Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, ordered the shrine attack in Samarra to set off just such a conflict in the hope of giving militants a regional base for holy war and dashing US hopes for stability that would let American troops go home.

The Jordanian Sunni militant’s group has in the past declared all-out war on “apostate” Shias and has claimed responsibility for most of suicide bombings that Iraqi and US officials say were designed to provoke Shia reprisals.

Shias who form 60 per cent of the population had largely heeded calls for restraint by their clerical leaders in the past, but last week’s violence showed that some were spoiling for revenge on Sunni extremists.

“Zarqawi and Al Qaeda have made big gains from this crisis,” said Hazim al-Naimi, a political science professor in Baghdad.

“He wants Iraq out of control and this will help him.”

Analysts say Zarqawi wants anarchy in which he can maintain long-term operations in the country, not unlike A Qaeda’s use of bases in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, with the overall aim of fostering religious rule throughout the region.

“Zarqawi wants to do one thing and that is create chaos that will help him reach his goal,” said Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group think-tank.

Zarqawi may have rejoiced when the shrines’ blast set off retaliation by men wearing the black of Shia militiamen. Shia militia leaders disowned the reprisals but said they reflected the degree of anger in their community.

Conversely, the violence has also reinforced efforts among many Iraqis to uphold a sense of unity. After 12 people were killed in their home near Baghdad on Saturday in a sectarian attack on Shias, neighbours and relatives gathered to insist their mixed community would resist violence.

But Iraqi leaders are not taking any chances.

Defence Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, who warned of “endless civil war” if the violence spiralled, threatened to fill the streets with tanks to stop sectarian tensions that have been building for two-and-half bloody years from exploding.

The Iraqi government only has a few tanks but they are backed by 130,000 US troops, now widely seen as critical to stopping civil war, even though both Sunni and Shia gunmen resent the US military presence.

“Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden want destructive anarchy, instability and chaos — anything so that the American project fails in Iraq,” said Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of London-based newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi and an expert on Al Qaeda.

Iraqi and US leaders hope splits between Arab militants loyal to Zarqawi, Iraq’s most wanted man, and Iraqi insurgents will make it easier to stabilise the country.

Zarqawi has angered fellow Sunnis with suicide bombings in areas populated by the minority sect. And the attack on the shrine deepened Iraqi fighters’ suspicions of him.

“The armed resistance is convinced that Zarqawi and others who have ties to the outside such as Iran and Israel are trying to hurt Sunnis and diminish their role in the Iraqi leadership,” said a militant known as Abdel Salaam of the nationalist insurgent group Mohammed’s Army in Falluja.

“We will open fire on them if they attack the symbols of national leadership and we have warned them,” he said.

Atwan said the mosque explosion might widen rifts between Al Qaeda-linked Sunni militants in Iraq and more moderate elements in the minority Sunni community, but if a full-scale sectarian conflict erupted, these divisions would wither.

Zarqawi, who has a $25 million US bounty on his head, is not expected to give up his holy war campaign, even if he has created deadly enemies of his own in Iraq.

“He has angered insurgents who don’t believe in his methods or in attacks on holy sites,” ICG’s Hiltermann said. “But that won’t stop him.”—Reuters