Ethnic Violence?

Juan Cole comments on the latest carnage in Iraq among police recruits:

Its location is significant, however. The guerrillas are also attempting to foment ethnic violence, and among the aims of the attack today was surely to promote Kurdish-Arab hatred.

This conclusion is not warranted. Here Juan Cole works from his assumption that most of the resistance is ex-Baathist (something he bases in part on Scott Ritter's earlier evaluation, something Ritter was moved away from by facts a few months ago). However, Cole forgets that one of the strongest (if not the strongest) Sunni fundamentalist fractions in Iraq is Kurdish: the Ansar-el-Islam group. In Ibril as in Mossul, Ansar is active.