All at sea in the Middle East's perfect storm

Simon Tisdall
Friday February 24, 2006
The Guardian

Sectarian revenge attacks and widening divisions in the wake of the Samarra mosque bombing have intensified fears of irreversible descent into all-out civil war in Iraq. But it is unclear what the US and Britain, lacking new ideas and facing a perfect storm of troubles across the Middle East, can do to stop it.

Among yesterday's many ominous developments, accusations of deliberate trouble-making levelled at Iraq's Shia leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, stood out. A spokesman for the Muslim Clerics Association, the country's most influential Sunni religious body, said it held "certain Shia religious authorities" responsible for continuing attacks on Sunni civilians, clerics and mosques.