(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-29 11:49

Profound divisions remain over the vision for the new Iraq -- either a strong central government or self-rule by ethnic and sectarian regions.

"The principal problem is this is a country with no agreement on what the country is," said Mideast analyst Jon Alterman. "You have lawlessness, thuggery and organized crime."

Sectarian wounds inflicted by Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime against Shiites and Kurds -- and ripped open in the recent wave of sectarian slaughter -- are far from healed.

"The distrust, the fear, the resentment on the part of the people who are in (Iraq's) government is profound," Phebe Marr, a leading Iraq scholar, told Foreignpolicy.com. "You only have to sit in a room and listen to these people talk to understand how deep the distrust is."

American soldiers encounter signs of this every day.

Sunni ex-insurgents are often more willing to deal with Americans than the Shiite-dominated security forces. Shiite police and army officers openly complain the Americans are dealing with Sunnis who have Shiite blood on their hands.

With such broad differences, many US diplomats, military commanders and private analysts doubt the Iraqis will reconcile through grand, sweeping agreements or landmark legislation at the national level.

Instead, they believe the best shot is a patchwork of local peace deals between Sunni and Shiite tribes which, over time, will produce reconciliation from the bottom up. That process could take years.

"You will see some levels of reconciliation in some places, but it's going to be hard to strike a grand agreement that means all sectarian problems are put behind us," Alterman said.

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