The recent upsurge of bomb attacks in Iraq has resulted in hundreds of casualties a month, and raised fears of a second Sunni/Shi’a civil war.

Al-Qa’ida is usually identified as responsible for this mayhem, but reports from Iraq indicate that part of the violence is also due to a power struggle between Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Da’wa Party, Sadrist militias and Ammar al-Hakim’s Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, all pro-Iranian groups maneuvering for the 2014 parliamentary elections. (CONTINUED - 801 WORDS)