Global Policy Forum

By Ahmed Rasheed and Alastair MacDonald

Tens of thousands more Iraqis have fled their homes as sectarian violence looks ever more like civil war two months after a US-backed national unity government was formed, official data showed yesterday. Iraq's most powerful religious authority, the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, joined the United Nations and US officials in raising the alarm that a rise in bloodshed and "campaigns of displacement" threaten Iraq's very future. The US military admitted violence in Baghdad was little changed by a month-long clamp down and the city morgue said it had seen 1,000 bodies so far in July, a slight increase on June.

A day after the United States issued a stern warning to both Shiite and minority Sunni leaders to match talk with action on reining in and reconciling "death squads" and "terrorists" from their respective communities, the migration ministry said more than 30,000 people had registered as refugees this month alone. "We consider this a dangerous sign," Sattar Nowruz, a ministry spokesman said, acknowledging that many people fled abroad or sought refuge with relatives rather than accept official aid or move into state camps.

The increase took to 27,000 families - some 162,000 people - the number who have registered for help with the ministry in the five months since the 22 February bombing of a Shiite shrine at Samarra sparked a new phase of communal bloodshed. Among 11 new tented camps being set up by the ministry is one in the southern city of Diwaniya, where police said about 10,000 Shiite refugees have arrived in recent weeks. They include Abd Hammad al-Saeidi. "Gunmen told us to leave or they would kill us," said the farmer from the violent lands just south of Baghdad. His family of 11 now live in a tent. At a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, Red Crescent officials said numbers taking refuge there rose sharply after suspected Shiite militiamen killed 40 in the Sunni district of Jihad on 9 July. Um Yaseen, a mother of ten, recalled fleeing the area: "It was a black day ... and not a single policeman was there to help us."

The US military conceded that a security operation launched a month ago had achieved only a "slight downtick" in bloodshed. "It's a start. We're moving in the right direction," Major-General William Caldwell said, adding that it would take "months not weeks" to gain a victory he described as a "must win" for Iraq.

The UN has also warned of the risk of civil war, two months after prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's coalition of Sunnis, Kurds and fellow Shiites was sworn in by parliament. The new data shows how Sunnis and other minorities have been leaving the south, while Shiites have quit areas around Baghdad and the north. There has also been an ethnic component to the displacement, with Kurds and Arabs moving to avoid hostile neighbours. In Baghdad, the Tigris river is becoming a divide between the Sunni west and Shiite east - definitions that leave many of the city's seven million on the "wrong" side.

Ayatollah Sistani, whose restraining grip on Shiite militias appears to be slipping, issued a rare statement: "I call on all sons of Iraq ... to be aware of the danger threatening their nation's future and stand shoulder to shoulder in confronting it by rejecting hatred and violence."