U.S. Plans to Let Iraqis Deal With a Civil War

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress on Thursday that if sectarian strife in Iraq evolved into civil war, U.S. troops intended to let Iraqi forces deal with it.

Defending the Bush administration’s $70-billion emergency war funding request before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Rumsfeld sought to assure senators that American combat units would not be ordered into the middle of full-scale civil strife.

In the days after last month’s destruction of the Golden Mosque, a Shiite shrine in Samarra, U.S. military officials indicated that American troops would try to avoid getting caught in the middle of civil war battles. But the Defense secretary’s comments to senators marked the first time that he had advanced such an approach as U.S. policy.

Asked by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) how the U.S. would respond to an Iraqi civil war, Rumsfeld said: “The plan is to prevent a civil war, and, to the extent one were to occur ... from a security standpoint, have the Iraqi security forces deal with it to the extent they’re able to.”

An increase in kidnappings and killings by Shiite and Sunni Muslim groups has moved the conflict in Iraq, now entering its fourth year, into a new phase in which U.S. forces face attack on multiple fronts.

U.S. officials have been careful in recent assessments, expressing optimism that Iraq can unite its factions in a new civilian government and avoid civil war. But Rumsfeld and Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander responsible for U.S. military operations throughout the Middle East, acknowledged Thursday that sectarian tensions in Iraq were dangerously high.

“As you correctly suggested, there is a high level of tension in the country -- sectarian tension and conflict,” Rumsfeld said in response to Byrd’s questioning. “As you also correctly said, it is not in a civil war at the present time by most experts’ calculation.”

Said Abizaid: “There’s no doubt that the sectarian tensions are higher than we’ve seen, and it is of great concern to all of us. On the other hand, the role played by Iraqi security forces after the Samarra bombing was quite professional.”

In an interview with The Times this week, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 had opened a “Pandora’s box” of volatile ethnic and sectarian tensions. Speaking more bluntly about the violence than other U.S. officials generally have, he said the “potential is there” for sectarian divisions to evolve into a full-blown civil war.

Khalilzad and others have said a show of force by U.S. and Iraqi units and occasional daytime curfews have helped pull the nation back from the brink of civil war after the Feb. 22 bombing of the mosque in Samarra and subsequent reprisals.

But officials have expressed concern recently that the violence may have gone underground, with kidnappings and executions taking the place of mass protests.