Of course it would never end. In fact, it hasn’t ended, ever since the days of Ali. It has never ended, it has only fallen into abeyance now and again. Just as the jihad has never ended, but ebbs and flows with the resources and will of those who wish to pursue it. From Reuters:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s defense minister warned on Saturday of the risk of a “civil war” that “will never end” as sectarian violence flared again despite a second day of curfew in Baghdad.
Extending a traffic ban in the capital to Monday after battles around Sunni mosques and a car bomb in a holy Shi’ite city, leaders scrambled to break a round of reprisals sparked by a suspected al Qaeda bombing of a Shi’ite shrine on Wednesday.
Sunni and Shi’ite clerics met to seek a joint approach at Baghdad’s holiest Sunni mosque, site of one clash overnight.
The gravest crisis since the U.S. invasion in 2003 threatens Washington’s hopes of withdrawing its 136,000 troops from Iraq.
“If there is a civil war in this country it will never end,” Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi, a minority Sunni Muslim in the Shi’ite-led interim government, told a news conference.
“We are ready to fill the streets with armored vehicles.”