Reading about the impending civil war in Iraq sparks some memories: we've been here before. Age old ethnic hatreds tearing a land apart? Kosovo, Rwanda, Bangladesh, anyone? But if well-intentioned liberals stopped wringing their hands long enough to pick up a book, they'd discover these communal bloodsports go way back to 19th century India, where the British invented them.


British colonial rule faced a basic problem: a few thousands colonists had to maintain political control over millions of people. Creating 'British Indians' worked for a while, but they couldn't do that for everyone - South Asians started to resent the teachers pets among them. After the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, the British needed a way to maintain direct rule, and they found it in religion. They infused the old categories of 'Muslim' and 'Hindu' with new power.

As Nigel Harris writes, previous to the rebellion,

'India' did not exist for the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants. It was a geographical not a political, social or cultural concept. Those who espoused the complex customs grouped under the terms Islam and Hinduism did not constitute groups (other than in the pure classification sense).

But once those terms had power, they were very useful:

The myth of 'the Muslims' as a political community was neither simply a mistake nor a fantasy. For it served important political functions: indeed, had the Muslims not existed, the British would have been obliged to invent something similar. For once the Muslims had been invented as an all-India political class, this created the Hindus, both groups by implication locked in battle with each other for hundreds of years until the British, by reason of their sense of justice and wisdom, were able to separate them in a benevolent order.

Sound familiar?

The party's still going on, it's just changed location

The U.S. is following an old - but not too old - script in Iraq. In a country where Sunnis, Shias and Kurds freely intermarried, the occupiers stacked the interior ministry with sectarian militias, split the police force along religious lines, and introduced sectarian death squads. It seems to have worked. The Guardian interviews a Sunni insurgent:

For months Adel fought the Americans almost every day, firing RPGs and laying IEDs (improvised explosive devices). His friends mocked his enthusiasm and his talk about the need to defend his country and started calling him "The Patriot".

But it has been a few months since he has taken part in any attacks against the hated occupiers. Adel The Patriot has a new mission. He commands a Sunni vigilante group, a dozen or so men armed with Kalashnikovs and a heavy calibre machine gun, attempting, they say, to defend their area against raids and "arrests" made by Shia interior ministry commandos.

"Sending you to Hell from Almost Heaven." - West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin signs a missile on an unmanned Predator aircraft stationed in Iraq. Manchin has since apologized.

Many Iraqis are well aware their attentions are being diverted, but having their neighbourhoods ethnically cleansed poses some immediate, practical problems:

Sheikh Omar - director of the human rights office of the Iraqi Islamic party, one of the leading Sunni political groups - is explaining how it was all the Americans' fault for empowering Shia militia to fight the insurgency, when a man opens the door and rushs in.

"Sheikh, the ministry commandos are attacking the Mahdiya area in Dora and people are in the mosque fighting back."

Solidarity gets lost in the struggle to survive. The Americans' strategy is winning new allies; as Adel says,

"Our only hope is if the Americans hit the Iranians, and by God's will this day will come very soon, then the Americans will give a medal to anyone who kills a Shia militiaman. When we feel that an American attack on Iran is imminent, I myself will shoot anyone who attacks the Americans and all the mujahideen will join the US army against the Iranians.

"Most of my fellow mujahideen are not fighting the Americans at the moment, they are too busy killing the Shia, and this is only going to create hatred. If someone kills one of my family I will do nothing else but kill to avenge their deaths."

Real enemies - mercenaries fly past Iraqi mosque

Iraq faces what the Worker-communists call the dark scenario,

in which people are caught up in bloody wars and conflicts, savage acts and enormous destruction... This happens not as the result of a revolution or.. the intervention of the masses. It happens as the result of the intervention of frenzied, ultra-reactionary religious, ethnic and tribal forces... often triggered by foreign invasion or aggression.

As savage as the sectarian violence is, let's not forget who started it, and who benefits from it: the American occupation. This isn't new, or an exception: it's a tried-and-test method of colonial rule stretching back 150 years.