Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said there was no other way to describe the increasing violence across the country. "It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day as ...

And yet the question persists: Is Iraq in a civil war? And if so, how, exactly, do you measure a civil war? Iraqis have never before in their modern history been embroiled in a civil war.

Other experts inside and outside Iraq are less sure. James Fearon, a Stanford University political scientist and an authority on modern conflicts, believes that Iraq’s civil war began almost as ...

The George W. Bush administration avoids the label, but a civil war between Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias has begun in Iraq under Nouri al-Maliki. Washington cannot stop it—and Iraqis will be ...

Despite the increase in sectarian violence in Iraq, administration and military officials refuse to describe the situation as a civil war. An admission that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war ...

Iraq's prime minister called on Syria on Thursday to block the infiltration of foreign fighters trying to start a civil war. More than a dozen Iraqis, including an Oil Ministry engineer, and four ...

First, an Iraqi civil war would imply the complete collapse of the country's central government. There is still reason to hope that Iraqis can form a government capable of carrying out its basic ...

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, Now we are engaged in a great—or at least major—civil war, testing whether this nation (of Iraq), or any nation (in the Middle East), can long endure.

Iraq is in the middle of a growing population displacement crisis. Thousands of Sunnis and Shiites have registered as refugees. Some say that's proof that Iraq is already in the throes of civil war.

U.S. and Iraqi government leaders have argued that the 150,000-strong foreign troop presence has kept the country from descending into full-scale civil war.

Even though the war in Iraq is already highly unpopular, the 30 percent who still support Bush would have second thoughts if he ever admitted that the conflict had devolved into a civil war.

The Implications of ‘Civil War’ in Iraq It is unclear if classifying the conflict in Iraq as a civil war will have serious ramifications for U.S. military strategy there or, for that matter, U ...