Via
MOMENT OF TRIUMPH
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I had been thinking that the current situation in Iraq, if we think of it as a civil war, is a very unusual kind of civil war in that it has no clear frontiers between the fighting factions. Although there are regions of Iraq dominated by either Sunni or Shi'ite, Arab or Kurd or Turkoman, Iraq was also the world's most urbanized nation in 2003 when the invasion began. These people have been living cheek by jowl for generations.
Now that they're killing each other, they're doing it at point-blank range. There will be no 'North and South.' In a way, Iraq is experiencing the kind of modern, urbanized civil war that I once feared would break out right here in the US.
Silly me, it wasn't until I heard some talking head saying the same thing on radio news yesterday that it occurred to me I wasn't just imagining things. As a side-note:
we should all have more confidence in ourselves on these issues, because there is absolutely zero leadership coming from our government and mostly propaganda coming from our news. We owe it to ourselves to trust ourselves because, Lord knows, we can't trust any of those assholes.
The situation right now in Iraq is more analogous to the former Yugoslavia in the early 90's where, before well-defined Croatians and Serbs squared off, the fighting was mostly neighbor against neighbor. Longtime friends became sudden, mortal enemies as ancient differences (submerged by a few decades of quasi-Stalinist rule) suddenly reemerged. The middle ages exploded into the present and no one was prepared for it.
A melee-mode civil war, without clear battle-lines, is the case in and around Sadr City and in the north of Iraq. That situation, however, can change.
The emergence of a conventional civil war, should it happen, will be simultaneous with the entrance or disturbance of the surrounding nations. Those nations' governments are already preparing for that eventuality.
I know you see a lot of this kind of article, but this one is worth reading in full. It contains a lot of information that I have not seen elsewhere.
The problem right now in Iraq is not limited to the surrounding nations' sympathies for one faction or another, nor is the problem a question of whether these surrounding nations are interfering in Iraq (they are). Rather, the situation in Iraq is an irritant to rivalries and hatreds between these nations that persist regardless of Iraq itself. Furthermore, Turkey isn't the only nation worried that a troublesome minority will use Iraq as a base from which to launch attacks. Remember: the boundaries of Iraq have nothing to do with the people of Iraq. They were drawn as a matter of administrative convenience by European empires. Everyone sees an opportunity waiting to be stolen:
Three years after warning that invading Iraq would unleash hell in the Middle East, Baghdad's neighbours fear they could be dragged into a brewing civil war.
As Sunni-Shi'ite violence intensifies, governments in Turkey, Iran and nearby Arab countries are drawing up plans to prevent any sectarian or ethnic conflict spilling across borders and upsetting their internal political balance, analysts say.
They are also considering its likely impact on an already shifting regional balance of power, in which Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia fears the rising political clout of Shi'ite Muslim Iran.
"If war breaks out in Iraq, it will become a battleground involving everyone in the region," said Kuwaiti political analyst Jassem al-Saadoun. "Every one of Iraq's neighbours is guilty of meddling in its affairs for political gain."
Ever since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, several Arab officials have warned of civil war in Iraq, where Shi'ites dominate the government and security forces and Sunni insurgents control swathes of the country.
With its majority Shi'ite population, post-Saddam Iraq was always going to have close ties to Iran. Analysts say Tehran may use its considerable sway over the new U.S.-backed government in Baghdad as a lever in its nuclear dispute with the West.
To counter emerging Shi'ite power in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have turned a blind eye to the large flow of cash heading to Sunni insurgents there, some Western diplomats believe.
They say charities run by Islamist extremists, and religious groups, are funding the fighting in Iraq. They also cite reports that governments are considering arming Sunni tribes there.
Turkey wants to stop Kurds carving out a state in Iraq, while Syria, trying to maintain some regional influence, faces U.S. charges that it funnels arms and fighters over the border.
"We could be looking at another Lebanon and that is extremely frightening," a Western diplomat said, referring to the 1975-1990 civil war which had sectarian roots but was also fuelled by foreign support for rival militias.
With their own Shi'ite minorities, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are especially worried that civil war in Iraq would divide their people and win more recruits for al Qaeda-type Sunni militants.
Nearby Sunni-led Bahrain, which has seen unrest among its Iranian-influenced Shi'ite majority, is equally concerned. Mohammed al-Sayed Said, deputy director of Egypt's al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies, said Saudi Arabia was the Arab country with most at stake, adding:
"It's a question of immediate borders, so they won't leave it to luck. They will do their best to stem Shi'ite power."
The kingdom is the world's largest oil exporter and its key crude-producing Eastern province is mainly Shi'ite-populated.
Alan Munro, a former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said the kingdom wanted to avoid fragmenting Iraq at all costs.
"They are rather worried that (civil war)... would reawaken all sort of designs on the part of neighbours," he added, referring to Iran. "The unity of Iraq is paramount in Saudi minds. They would do all they could to buttress stability."
Any sectarian conflict could also suck in Sunni-majority Jordan and Syria, strong advocates of Iraqi national unity.
"If there is a widescale civil war in Iraq between Sunnis and Shi'ites, its sparks will spread across the region but mostly hit Jordan and Syria," said Mamdouh al-Abbadi, a prominent Jordanian lawmaker and former minister.
"We will end up being drawn to taking sides because of our predominantly Sunni population," he added.
With the Lebanese civil war still fresh in many Arab minds, analysts said governments were unlikely to intervene militarily.
"But they will also do the minimum to stop people from going to fight in Iraq to avoid a sectarian conflict at home," said Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper.
One Saudi official said Arabs fighting foreign forces in Iraq could prove even more dangerous than al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the men who battled Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
These fighters may return home and turn their guns against U.S.-allied governments that are already combating al Qaeda.
"Iraq's neighbours cannot allow a civil war to happen, not out of love for Iraq, but out of self-defence," said Saadoun, the Kuwaiti analyst. "Most of them are aware that those who fuel the fire of civil war will be burned by it too." (Additional reporting by Andrew Hammond in Riyadh, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Jonathan Wright in Cairo)
One early condition granted to the quasi-puppet governments, one after another, that have been playing house in the Green Zone in Baghdad is that any non-coalition military force assisting with policing Iraq could not be drawn from any nation bordering that country. This is an example of how tense things already were, and that was over two years ago.
This is the kind of violence, by the way, that oldman and I had anticipated in our very own America for some time. But now I don't see that as likely any more. Externally, there are no forces pushing political or sectarian violence in America, unlike Iraq. Internally, those most likely to see their violence as justified have fragmented as immigration and the Dubai deal have estranged the bushtard herd from their well-heeled handlers. Finally, their entire program has failed and they know it.
The impotent flailing of the Bush administration's foreign policy, which recognized it had lost support and allies and so turned to brute force everywhere (hastening the agenda's demise) is mirrored exactly inside America: they've blown it, everyone knows it, and all they have is the power they don't know what to do with.
We may have been saved, if only by the failure of our worst angels to bring about their utopia and the Republic's destruction. But in the process, these creatures have visited America's worst nightmare on another nation, and plenty of predators are ready to pounce. This is the shape of civil war in Iraq. This is also the reason the right is allergic to its very mention. It's not just that they're averse to admitting their clear failure (they are). It's that Iraq is in the throes of what they had secretly dreamed for America.
Theocracy. Blood in the streets. Finally getting your hands on those people who keep being right. Abusing your authority to mask your continual failure, to blot out your humiliation (however temporarily) in someone else's agony. We escaped this. Iraq did not.
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