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Analysis: Divisions in Iraq deepen
16.10.2006 |
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BAGHDAD, Iraq -
The Sunni Arab and al-Qaida insurgency that first
shoved Iraq toward chaos three years ago clearly had
taken a back seat by Sunday to the sectarian
bloodletting that is sending the country spiraling
toward — if not deeper into — civil war.
Evidence continued to mount in the 44th month of
U.S. involvement that Iraqi centers of power —
politicians and the government, the police and
military — were unable or unwilling to rein in
violence in parts of the country where Sunni and
Shiite Muslim or Kurdish populations rub up against
one another.
The violence has forced at least 1.5 million Iraqis
to flee their homeland, with hundreds of new
passports being issued daily to those who can afford
a plane ticket or taxi ride out of the country,
according to the Migration Ministry. The ministry
said 300,000 people had also left their homes for
elsewhere in Iraq.
The Shiite Majority in parliament, over complaints
of dirty tricks from rival Sunni and even some
Shiite legislators, adopted a measure that would
allow the effective partition of the country after
an 18-month waiting period — something widely
opposed in polls of Iraqis.
"The starting point is to recognize that Iraq is not
going to be a democratic, unified country that
serves as a model for the region. The violence and
the Sunni-Shiite division have already ruled that
out," Dennis Ross, a Mideast peace negotiator and
policy maker for Presidents Clinton and George H.W.
Bush, wrote in an Op-ed column for the Washington
Post on Sunday.
A partition would leave Iraq with a weak central
government and largely independent states run by
Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south and Sunnis
in the center and west — giving impetus for still
more violence and still further population upheaval.
Iraqis so-called national unity government announced
that next Saturday's much-anticipated national
reconciliation conference was indefinitely postponed
for unspecified "emergency reasons." A week before
the planned opening of the conference, Iraq's deeply
divided politicians had not managed even to agree on
a venue for the meeting.
Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in power for
just more than four months, took office at the head
of what was termed a national unity government.
Within days he had presented a 24-point plan for
national reconciliation. The inability to meet on
that topic speaks to the failure of both his
government and opposition politicians.
The postponement was announced on the first
anniversary of the successful national referendum
which adopted the country's first post-Saddam
constitution, which was hailed at the time of a
harbinger of a peaceful and democratic Iraq.
By the close of the weekend, at least 86 people were
reported dead in a two-day spree of sectarian
revenge killings and insurgent bombings — mainly in
one city north of Baghdad.
The capital, where random sectarian violence and
roving death squads have caused traffic jams to
vanish and commerce and society to head toward a
standstill, felt like a stick of dynamite with a
lighted fuse.
American analysts like Ross and Anthony H. Cordesman,
of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies have said this week that 15,000 to 20,000
additional U.S. troops were needed to give the
Americans an even shot at leaving behind a peaceful
Iraq.
Then, they say, major policy changes are necessary
in both Washington and Baghdad.
"Iraq is already in a state of serious civil war.
The current efforts at political compromise and
improved security at best are buying time. There is
a critical risk that Iraq will drift into a major
civil conflict over the coming months, see its
present government fail, and/or divide and separate
in some form," Cordesman wrote in an analysis last
week.
Ross said the best solution was, in fact, the
formation of a federal state, with Shiites, Sunnis
and Kurds running areas where they are majorities.
A majority of Shiite politicians favor a division,
but the larger population and some powerful leaders
like anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr refuse to
accept such a plan. It is, however, highly popular
among minority Kurds, who have fought for centuries
to carve out an independent state from lands they
live on across a belt of northeastern Syria
(Western-Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Southern
Kurdistan), southeastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan)
and northwestern Iran (Eastern Kurdistan).
Sunnis, a minority sect in Iraq that ran the country
until the ouster of Saddam, are violently opposed,
fearing it would leave them with no revenue from
Iraq's oil riches. Natural resources are largely
absent from their lands in central and western Iraq.
AP
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