Multimedia Reporting (Kuhr-Musser)

As political pundits remain divided on the question of whether or not Iraq will erupt in a civil war, an expert at the University of Kansas claims that his research indicates it will not.

“I can’t predict the future”, Ron Francisco, political science professor, said, “but right now it looks highly unlikely.”

Francisco, who teaches a class in protest and revolution, maintains a website collecting data on protests and civil wars throughout history. In 2004 he published a paper entitled “After the Massacre”, which detailed various responses to examples of violence by one group against another. He calls these responses “backlash.” In most cases he has observed that the backlash will end after a few days unless leaders of the group continue to organize responses.

Francisco said that the patterns he noticed are mirrored in the response to the bombing of the Shiite mosque in Samarra on February 22.

“There was a backlash for about three days, but it died down,” Francisco said. “Mobilization couldn’t be sustained. It behaved the same way (as other backlashes)”

Francisco said that the main reason he sees civil war as unlikely is because the major target for both the Sunnis and Shiites is not each other, but rather U.S. troops.

“They do it because that is what Iran wants, and Iran, not the U.S., controls most of the Shiite population in Iraq,” Francisco said. He added that in order for the situation to turn to civil war, Iran would have to decide that they want to hurt Sunnis.

Francisco also said that he has not noticed any evidence in Iraq of the one factor that he has found leads to civil wars, which is the concept of co-evolution.

“It actually comes from biology,” Francisco said. “It’s when both sides realize they have to adapt in order to defeat the other side, and so they do, so the ratio stays at 1 to 1 and the violence escalates.”

Despite Francisco’s research showing a civil war to be unlikely, one of his colleagues at KU said that he assesses the situation much differently.

“It’s more or less inevitable,” Philip Schrodt, political science professor, said. “It’s basically already in a civil war.”

Schrodt said that he felt Francisco must be using a definition of civil war that is too narrow, and he believes the current situation constitutes one.

“It’s essentially an urban guerilla war,” Schrodt said. “You’ve got large scale violence defined by ethnicity. The Sunnis have the most to lose, and also feel they are ebing attacked, which they are.”

Schrodt said that Francisco’s observations about the backlash to the Mosque bombing were not accurate.

“It’s been 10 days since the bombing, it hasn’t died down,” he said. He also disagreed that there was no evidence of co-evolution in the situation, saying it exists “in the very early stages.”

One thing that both experts agree on is that a civil war would be a terrible thing for the region.

“In civil war the conflict comes to neighborhoods,” Francisco said. “They attack water supplies, more women are raped, food is contaminated, usually there are houses burned. It’s absolutely horrible.”