BAGHDAD -- When the photo of the bloodied face of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was displayed to the Baghdad press corps Thursday, we confronted something even uglier than a mass murderer's corpse.
This was the face of a man who deliberately provoked civil war in Iraq. More than any other factor, he bears responsibility for the sectarian violence that threatens the country. Staring at the grainy image of that bearded face, with red splotches on cheek and nose, one had to wonder whether the evil he unleashed could now be checked.
This is the big question of the post-al-Zarqawi era: Will his death make it more feasible for Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis to reconcile and stabilize the country? Or will the civil war worsen and entrap American soldiers between the warring sides?
Mr. al-Zarqawi was spectacularly successful in his efforts to make Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis kill each other. The Muslim sects differ in their beliefs over the rightful succession to the prophet Muhammad. But in Iraq, they have intermarried for centuries, and the larger tribes include members of both sects.
When Saddam Hussein fell, tensions between minority Sunnis and majority Shiites increased. Mr. Hussein had favored the former and persecuted the latter. The bulk of the insurgency was led by Sunni Baathists and military men who were resentful at their loss of power.
But the Sunni zealot Mr. al-Zarqawi and his small al-Qaida movement went further, labeling Shiites apostates and bombing their mosques and markets. For more than two years, the supreme Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, forbade retaliation. But neither U.S. forces nor Iraqi security forces could protect the Shiites from death.
Finally, in February, Mr. al-Zarqawi's followers blew up one of Shiite Islam's holiest sites, the al-Askariyah Shrine, provoking revenge by Shiite militias. This, in turn, led to more Sunni retaliation - and a cycle that is tearing apart families, neighborhoods and whole towns.
You can feel the al-Zarqawi impact everywhere.
Shiites who live in Sunni neighborhoods get messages telling them to move out on 24 hours' notice or face death. An acquaintance from the Shiite shrine city of Karbala in southern Iraq tells me refugee camps are filling up on its outskirts with poor Shiites who have been driven from Baghdad or mixed towns to the north.
