BAGHDAD — On the third anniversary of the US invasion, forecasts of how Iraq will look three years hence range from gloomy to apocalyptic.A full parliament has met for the first time in what should have been the crowning achievement of the US-backed political process that began with toppling Saddam Hussein. But deadlock on forming a coalition has hampered efforts to stave off civil war.

“We first need to see if the country can hold together for the next four years before worrying about whether the government will last that long,” one Sunni leader said.

Bloody sectarian reprisals since the February 22 bombing of a Shi’ite shrine have blighted the political atmosphere.

The goal is a coalition that can survive a four-year term to build consensus and security forces that can cope without much US help. Ranged against it are America’s enemies keen to keep it embroiled in Iraq, and ethnic and sectarian groups competing for Iraq’s oil wealth, possibly backed by rival regional powers.

This week’s tentative moves towards US-Iranian talks on Iraq can be read as a sign of hope or a desperate bid to avert a regional crisis that US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has said would make Afghanistan look like “child’s play”.

Optimists allow that a unity government might work. Many analysts believe life will get little better. Some see disaster.

“The reconstruction is destined to fail,” said Pierre-Jean Luizard, an Iraq expert at France’s CNRS state research council.

“Iraq is condemned to an endless civil war.”

For others, all that is certain is uncertainty.

“Never mind in three years, no one can predict what Iraq will look like in three months,” said analyst Walid al-Zubaidi, noting the timing of a US withdrawal was a major unknown.

Iraqis can agree that occupation is repugnant, but many also say US-led forces are constraining worse violence.

Judith Yaphe, a former CIA analyst at the US National Defence College, saw no great change soon: “I see the current situation — the insurgency and violence — persisting for the next forseeable period. I don’t know what the period is.”

Henner Fuertig at the German Institute for Middle East Studies envisages four scenarios, more or less equally likely.

They range from a best case where the US plan actually works to a worst, in which civil war combines with a proxy “war of civilisations” between Muslims and Americans fought in Iraq.

“Reconstruction may succeed. There is still a possibility,” he said. “Many, many experts did not think there would be a process of elections, a constitution ... But there was.”

Nonetheless, Fuertig said: “The second option is civil war. This option has become more probable in the past few weeks.”

Another could be a new, probably Shi’ite, “dictatorship”.

That possibility was also raised by Charles Tripp, a British historian of Iraq, who questioned how much party “oligarchs” in Baghdad can control supporters and leaders in the provinces. “Much will hinge on the relationship between the two,” he said.

Political parties are weak, he added. Bargaining in the capital would depend on whether local followers respect their leaders’ promises on security, oil supplies or other issues.

If not, anarchy and local warlordism could prevail.

With the Shi’ite religious establishment warning that its restraining influence is waning, many Iraqis are preparing for the worst, arming themselves, fleeing neighbourhoods where they feel in a minority and, if they can, leaving the country.

Despite heavy US investment, Iraq’s new security forces are untested and some predict they would splinter along ethnic and sectarian lines in the face of a generalised conflict.

The International Crisis Group think-tank said last month: “A civil war ... could trigger the country’s dissolution, as Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shi’ites step up the swapping of populations ... It would come at terrifying human cost.”

It called for change, already tacitly supported by US diplomats, in the constitution passed last year. Sunnis dislike provisions for regional autonomy that they say could see Kurds in the north and southern Shi’ites hiving off Iraq’s oil.