The return of civil war in Iraq?

A surge of violence in Iraq has exposed the conventional wisdom dominant among U.S. politicians and the mainstream media that the occupation of Iraq has succeeded in establishing stability.

More than 200 Iraqis died in a series of suicide bombings and other attacks in a 10-day stretch at the end of April. Also killed were some 80 Shia Muslims from Iran who were on a religious pilgrimage.

U.S. and Iraqi government officials blamed the violence on al-Qaeda-linked groups. But there are signs of a deeper conflict between the Shia-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the Awakening Councils--Sunni militias made up of fighters from the earlier anti-occupation insurgency that the U.S. has been funding and supplying on the promise that they turn their guns on al-Qaeda.

Michael Schwartz is author of War Without End: The Iraq War in Context. He explained to Ashley Smith why the renewed violence is a sign of continuing fault lines in Iraqi politics--and could shake up the Obama administration's plan to shift U.S. forces to the war on Afghanistan.

Link to interview