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The root problem which will not go away when the western troops leave, is that
there is now such visceral hatred and fear between the two rival sects of Islam,
and this is not excluded from the Iraqi army and police, who on present form
will in the absence of foreign troops, probably be out of civilian control -
and of course there are waiting in the wings, the massive sectarian armed militias.
It could take a generation to enable the communities to live together without
well justified fear. The path that the US is taking with the only possible successor
power to themselves, the elected civilian government, ignores the fact that
unlike a 'proper' democracy, these politicians are for the most part not elected
on any platform of proposed policies, but in the interests of the tribal and
sectarian groups from which they come. That can only mean in such a crude and
vengeful environment that the sectarian majority will oppress the sectarian
minority, who will have no recourse to justice - except that which comes from
the barrel of a gun!
Our PRESCRIPTION is that Iraq should quickly become a federation.
They should recreate (approximately) the boundaries of the three historic Ottoman
provinces that preceded the end of WWI and the subsequent 1932 British creation
of an independent state of Iraq, which can be seen to have spectacularly failed
under quite different forms of government.
Government of each component province should be strong and a federal government
working from a Baghdad enclave, remodelled on Washington's District of Columbia
lines, should be concerned only with such governance (ie foreign policy; divisions
of oil-based income, national defence); that cannot effectively be carried out
at regional level.
The corollary is that the alliance troops should RIGHT NOW be shepherding
'displaced' communities back to where they will be safe from communal murder,
once Alliance troops are withdrawn. The awful lesson to be learned is from the
terrible communal violence when the British left India and the future Pakistan
in 1947, a bloodbath which some estimated as resulting in a million deaths,
mostly amongst civilians displaced and seeking to rejoin their own people.
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Comments
I would amend the prescription: Allied troops should withdraw to northern Iraq and establish a permanent base there. Remember the moral argument at the beginning of the war was that Saddam gassed "his own people", the Kurds. My impression is that no other main group has any strong allegiance or loyalty to this group either. The Kurds have always been their own ethnic group, historically spread out in the mountains and originally living partially nomadic lives. It was the first gulf war that gave them there own borders for the first time. If allied troops pull out from Iraq in full, the Kurds will be ethnically cleansed in no time: Iran, Turkey, Syria, the groups in Southern Iraq and who knows who else all would like a piece of what the Kurds now have. If we pull out they are doomed. If we stay it would give us a permanent base in a crucial region. My guess is the Kurds know their future if we leave and eventually would wise to this and welcome us as permanent allies.
I like the solution offered, it is almost perfect! I think that the United States has no intention of leaving the Middle East. This is the new Europe of the cold war. The land is strategically important. Does this change the position of the author of this article if taken into account?
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