Making Sense of the Violence in Iraq

March 30, 2007 — -- More than 300 people have been killed in Iraq this week alone in a series of devastating car bombs and suicide attacks.

To television viewers this apparently endless violence seems senseless and abhorrent. Abhorrent it certainly is -- particularly to the many innocent Iraqi victims. However, it is important to understand it is not senseless or gratuitous -- these attacks are carefully calibrated in their size and location, all carried out with specific goals in mind. In the grim realpolitik of Iraq today, where violence has become the language of politics, an infernal logic guides each murderous car bomb to its destination.

The U.S. troop surge has changed the nature of violence in Iraq. The Shiite leaders, who control the government and are reasonably happy with the status quo, have told their militias not to confront the Americans but to melt away, at least temporarily, and wait out the surge. So death squad killings have dropped.

The Sunni insurgents, however, who have little political power and no access to oil revenues, are determined to challenge the Shiite-controlled status quo -- and to frustrate the U.S. peace plan, which they believe is just rubber stamped Shiite supremacy. Hence, the bombings in Tal Afar, Khalis and Shaab this week -- all in Shiite neighborhoods, carried out almost certainly by Sunni insurgents seeking to provoke a reaction from the Shiites.

Shaab market, in northern Baghdad, has been attacked at least eight times in the last 18 months, mostly by car bombs. It is a Shiite market, surrounded by Sunni neighborhoods, and so is easier to for Sunni insurgents to permeate than Sadr City, a more tightly controlled Shiite area in the east of Baghdad.

Shaab has seen a lot of sectarian violence. When the U.S. began its troop surge in February, Shaab was one of the first districts targeted. The market was ringed with checkpoints and barriers to keep car bombers out.

The insurgents are quick to adapt their tactics on the ground. Thursday's bombing was carried out by two men with explosive vests who slipped through the security net. They also chose the time of the bombing carefully --