Sectarian splits: made or found?

On the left and on the right, people are talking about the deep sectarian splits in Iraq. Here are two fairly random examples.

On the left, Prof. Edmundson on Leiter Reports:

But the fractious Iraqis--forming as portmanteau a category as "the Yugoslavians"--won't cooperate in forming a client goverment unless it suits their several, incompatible, bitterly sectarian aims.

That's right: we're talking bitter sectarianism, which is possibly the worst possible flavour of sectarianism.

On the right, someone I've never heard of on WorldNetDaily:

From the get-go, "Iraq" was a Western invention. The further one moves from the thin veneer of secular governance in Baghdad, the weaker becomes the notion of national identity.

The terror and corruption of Saddam's regime was insufficient to produce an "Iraq" from what the British invented.... This is why no central government has been formed in Baghdad.

I get the impression that this idea is more popular on the left than on the right. Still, there seems to be fairly widespread agreement that, once the old regime was toppled, the rise of Sunni/Shia violence was a natural and unavoidable expression of the underlying sectarian nature of the Iraqi populace. Of course, there is a divergence of opinion concerning the conclusions to be drawn about responsibility and blame. The conclusion on the left is that the Bush administration should have recognized this fact, and realized that the plan to reshape Iraq was doomed from the very start. The conclusion on the right is that, given that the invasion was necessary (or, if the reasons for invasions were lacking, we ought to leave that in the past and deal with the present situation), the outbreak of conflict was a natural consequence for which nobody ought to be held responsible.

Now for a dissenting opinion from Riverbend, who actually lives there (and, incidentally, is up for a book award):

I read constantly analyses mostly written by foreigners or Iraqis who’ve been abroad for decades talking about how there was always a divide between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq... but how under a dictator, nobody saw it or nobody wanted to see it. That is simply not true- if there was a divide, it was between the fanatics on both ends. The extreme Shia and extreme Sunnis. Most people simply didn’t go around making friends or socializing with neighbors based on their sect. People didn't care- you could ask that question, but everyone would look at you like you were silly and rude.

If sectarian splits have been there all along, pervading Iraqi society, why did so many Iraqi Shia and Sunnis coexist peacefully for so long? The standard explanation, I suppose, was that the oppressive rule of the Baathist regime kept everybody in line. But if that oppressive force kept them from killing each other, what was it that made them move next door to each other, become friends with each other, intermarry? Raising a family with someone towards whom you harbour deep and long-standing religious animosity is quite the undertaking, and seems a bit supererogatory: perhaps Iraqis were trying to really impress the Baathists by doing the opposite of sectarian trouble-making.

Edmundson compares the Iraqi situation to the breakup of Yugoslavia along ethnic lines following the death of the dictator Tito. The comparison may be apt for reasons other than those that Edmundson has in mind. It's been a while, but I have some vague recollections of reading Michael Ignatieff's Warrior's Honour. As with Iraq, many saw the brutal fighting in the former Yugoslavia as a result of long-standing and deep ethnic hatreds, but (as I recall) Ignatieff disagreed. Those hatreds did not precede the fall of Tito, when a stable social and political order was maintained in Yugoslavia. Rather, when the protection afforded to a populace by a state is taken away, and the spectre of anarchy looms, superficial differences--such as those between ethnic groups, or between religions--cease to be thought of as superficial, and are transformed into sources of deep conflict. (I remember an account of a member of one militia explaining his feelings of hatred towards the people he was trying to kill. He waved a cigarette and declared that, over on that side of town, they smoked an entirely different brand of cigarette.)

And one might think that this is what is happening in Iraq. Not the expression of pre-existing sectarian differences, but the spread and intensification of such differences, ones which previously played a minimal role in the consciousness of the average Iraqi. But then we have to reverse the standard order of explanation which accounts for the failures of government in terms of presupposed sectarian divisions. And we have to come to terms with the idea that, in addition to the concrete loss of livelihood and lives, the war is taking a toll on something else entirely. Riverbend writes, "It’s difficult to define what worries us most now." I think she's talking about the mutilation of the very structure of Iraqi society. It's unclear how that sort of damage could be repaired.