It will take about 10 days for the vote to be tabulated and announced for Sunday's historic election to seat a 275-member parliament, says Mohammad, who declined to give his real name to protect his safety. In the next 10 days, existing armed groups will step into place, he says. Anytime after Feb. 20, all bets are off, he says.

"I'll bet $1,000 on the timing, I'm that sure," Mohammad says, however, offering dessert to some patrons. "Everyone who says things will be fine is short-sighted."

Mohammad is a well-traveled businessman who owns hotels and other companies across Iraq. He bases his prediction on discussions with neighbors and relatives around the country, admitting it's not scientific. He says he won't speculate about what could set off the fighting.

Iraq has numerous paramilitary groups, both legal and illegal. Badr Brigade members loyal to the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite Muslim group, heeded a call to disband but still hold weapons in warehouses -- mostly in southern Iraq. Anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada Sadr controls the Mahdi Army, a militia that fought against U.S. forces in Najaf and Sadr City in September. Some arms were turned in as part of an amnesty program, but Sadr did not run in the election, and his followers are believed to still hold weapons.

On the Sunni Muslim side, insurgents believed to be former members of the Iraq Army and elite special forces continue almost daily attacks on coalition forces. In the Kurdish north, peshmerga forces are in charge of security.

Politicians and rel igious leaders alike continue to insist that ethnic strife is impossible.

"Elections gave a huge blow to those trying to fight," said Adel Abdul Mehdi, finance minister and a Shiite Muslim candidate to become the new prime minister. "(Insurgents) said there would be a low percent of participation. But we had a very high participation. Iraq is more united today than it ever has been."

But several ethnically related killings in recent weeks show a disturbing trend. Just last week, two workers from the Ministry of Migration and Displacement were killed in the northern city of Baqouba while trying to open an office to help displaced Arab Muslims in the north, said Suraya Isho, the minister.

A large number of displaced people live in Baqouba, which is also seen as an insurgent stronghold. Under former dictator Saddam Hussein, former military officials were often given land and houses in northern cities to change the citie s' ethnic makeup. After the regime fell, Kurdish Muslims in many of those areas pushed out Arabs they said were living in Kurdish houses.

Of more than 19,000 claims filed by families forced out of their homes in the region, less than 100 have been heard by judges and none have been decided, according to Capt. Carrie Przelski, an operational intelligence officer in the U.S. Army's First Cavalry Unit based in Tikrit.

In another recent ethnic incident, a Christian demonstrator was so severely beaten up by Kurdish political party workers, he is still in the hospital, Isho said. Christians protested Monday near the northern city of Mosul, complaining that an estimated 150,000 did not get a chance to vote because ballot boxes never arrived.

"Members of the PDK (a Kurdish political group) gave themselves permission to do this," Isho said. "They attacked the demonstration and also arrested members of the municipality leadersh ip."

Ballots continue to be tabulated under heavy watch Wednesday at a secret location in central Baghdad. An estimated 8 million Iraqis turned out to vote under heavy security, most of them Shiite Muslims, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday on condition of anonymity.

To add political fuel to the fire, a conservative Sunni Muslim group said it would not consider vote valid, since it was held under an occupation force, said Mohammed Bashir al-Fuedi, a spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars. Sunni Muslim voter turnout was low, the U.S. official said.

In recent months, insurgents have carefully coordinated attacks against Christians in their churches, kidnapped a Catholic priest in northern Iraq, and bombed Shiite Muslims in their mosques.

Some argue that Iraq already sees civil war conditions every day. A mortar attack and suicide bomb attacks on Election Day killed an estimated 22 Shii te Muslims across the country, for example.

Perhaps not as violent but still worrying -- Shiite and Sunni Muslim university students who used to be friends now avoid each other so as not to get into arguments about whether it's OK for an Iraqi civilian to be killed in the name of fighting to get U.S. forces to leave the country, said an Iraq journalist who declined to be named.

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