I’m in Iraq and we are seeing more and more mixed neighborhoods splitting up. The Shia are going migrating to Shia neighborhoods, the Sunni are going to be with other Sunnis. This is how Yugoslavia started, it’s happening. Thought you might like to know.
Longer term this is a good thing. Hopefully it can be managed without the violence of Yugoslavia or the geographical issues of the Caucusus. Iraq’s an artificial construct anyway so the sooner we let the people get back to their natural states the better. Turkey won’t like an independent Kurdistan but that’s too bad.
And then, in 50 years or so, hopefully they’ll start trusting one another again.
I disagree. I think this is going to be much bloodier than Yugoslavia, with much worse consequences for the United States, never mind the people of Iraq.
I also disagree that Iraq is a completely artificial construct. The region did have a long history of coexistence between Sunni and Shia (not as much for the Kurds) that predates its the drawing of its current borders. There are many families that have inter-married in Iraq. These familial ties are now going to be pulled apart in the most painful way imaginable.
This conflict has the potential to pull in outside nations to fight a proxy war. The Saudis on the side of the Sunni and the Iranians on the side of the Shia. If fact the rise of sectarianism in Iraq has given radical mullahs in Iran legitimacy. Prior to the collapse of secularism in Iraq, the mullahs in Iran were on the defensive and facing growing calls for reform. Now, with the rise of Shiaism (to coin a term) across the region, as well as a threat from US military forces, extremist mullahs in Iran have been emboldened to pursue a more openly pursue a nuclear weapon.
Further the collapse of a secular Iraqi nation is going to undermine secularism throughout the region as more nations get pulled into this rift. The coming conflict has the very real possibility of pulling in nations throughout the region, sending oil prices up and disrupting the global economy.
For the United States the failure of the Iraqi experiment will likely undermine US legitimacy and prestige for the next few decades, precisely at the same time that China enters the world stage as a major player. Further, the ideal of spreading democracy has similarly been set back and will now be seen as just a fig leaf for neo-colonialism.
Oh, and thousands of people are likely to be slaughtered and families pulled apart, but I guess they are just the eggs of this omlette.
The trouble really comes when ethnicities begin scrapping over a particular prize, Kirkuk being the one I have in mind. Or Baghdad, for that matter. I read in the NY Times the other day that there had been 30,000 internal refugees in the previous month. That’s a trend that can only accelerate, as little ethnic enclaves become smaller and less defensible. Hope you’ve got a way out, madmonk, if push comes to shove.
To tell you the truth, that is probably the most convincing “this is why the United States shouldn’t have gone into Iraq” argument I’ve ever read. I look forward to the development of this thread.
I think that the Shia and Sunni have a right to determine how they live their lives, and if they don’t want to live among each other, that is no affair of the rest of the world. Let them decide the makeup of their own homelands.
Be guided by the wise hand of Quartz.
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Unfortunately for the Sunnis, however, most of the major oil fields in Iraq are in Kurdish and Shia-majority regions. If there is any multi-state solution, it won’t be with the consent and cooperation of the Sunnis, since without oil revenues they would be impoverished.
True.
Ah, but the current intermingling of sectarian and ethnic communities is “natural.” At least it has been the state of affairs for some time - among the Arab communities since the widespread demographic reshaping in the 18th century as a predominantly Sunni nomadic population became a predominantly Shi’a settled population.
As madmonk mentioned not only is intermarriage common, but many Arab tribes/tribal confederacies in Iraq have both Shi’a and Sunni components, as with the Shammar, Zubayd and Jubur ( to name just a few ). No this segregation is imminently unnatural and very unhealthy - it can very easily lead to increased polarization and since the segregation ( at least at first ) is liable to be much more local in mixed areas ( i.e. by neighborhood rather than region - moving to Sadr city in Baghdad will seem more practical for many poor Shi’a than taking off for Basra ), it has the potential for a lot of particularly ugly bloodshed. Balkanization is rarely positive.
- Tamerlane
I happen to have read some ays dago a long article on this very issue, and I too think it’s a very significant evolution. More significant than everything else I heard about recently (including bombings of holy shrines and such…).
The problem, as I understand it, is that Shias and Sunnis don’t necessarily want, in their majority, to stop living together, but that the disruption caused by a minority result in such fear and distrust that it’s no longer possible for them to feel safe. It’s not necessary that all your neighbors hate you to think that you should better live elsewhere. A couple of them wishing death on you, or even the suspicion that a couple of them could possibly turn you to somebody who would have no qualm killing you is largely enough in a place where security is becoming non-existent.
By the way, am I mistaken, ** madmonk **, in thinking you’re there to build schools or something similar?
According to the article I read, some of these tribes are splitting apart too to the point their leaders belonging to rival confessions don’t even get together anymore.
What going on in Irak is very unsettling (until now, I still held hope, but it’s now fading) and I honestly can’t see how any kind of solution can be found. Even the running debate about whether or not the american forces should stay seems now to be beyond the point.
You know, this whole thread started because I was in a meeting yesterday and we were talking about how there are these impromtu IDP (Internally Displaced People) camps pop up all over and we should try and get them some emergency supplies.
So then we got into a discussion of who they were and why they were displaced and it turns out a lot of them are from mixed neighborhoods. I mean neighborhoods tha have been mixed for generations. And it just clicked in my head (I’m kinda slow): this is Yugoslavia, I’ve seen this before. It is happening right in front of me.
I really disagree that ethnic cleansing is the natural state of affairs. This is being manufactured right before our eyes and I think is a direct result of the failed policies of the Bush administration and the machinations of religous fanatics with support from outside the country who are taking advantage of the current state of affairs.
Thousands of people are going to be slaughtered. Thousands.
I think some people want to take comfort in the idea that it was meant to be, which means we don’t share any of the guilt or have a responsibility to do something. But in fact, we can trace the series of events that lead to this moment just as we could in Yugoslavia and just as surely as you can explain the workings of a clock. In my experience it gets harder to dismiss these things as the natural state if you have to look people in the eye while its happening.
clairobscur sorry I didn’t answer your question about why I’m here before. I’m working on a development project rebuilding a lot of stuff. When I was here 2003-2004 I was working on a project rebuilding schools, now it’s pretty much rebuilding whatever got blowed up. We’re very busy.
And sorry for the sloppy editing of my posts. I get worked up.
Well, Yugoslavia had many ethnic-related troubles. Are you specifically referring to the civil war in Bosnia (and to a lesser extent Croatia)? Or are you referring to Kosovo? The civil war in Bosnia involved organized armies, with the exception of the Bosnian muslims who did not fully organize until later in the war. The ethnic cleansing in Kosovo also involved a uniformed, organized army driving people from their homes and killing some of them. Both of those examples seem a bit different since any ethnic cleansing in Iraq seems to be carried out by militias which do not seem to be mounting a sustained, coordinated campaign.
The problem, at least in northern cities like Kirkuk, is that some of this displacement is a return to the natural state of affairs. Throughout the late '80s, Saddam encouraged Sunni Arabs to move to Kurdish-dominated cities near the Iraqi oil fields and requisitioned Kurdish homes to facilitate this.
Gladstone Actually, I believe the militias are mounting a sustained ethnic cleansing campaign. They are still in the early stages, however, and are still exerting their energies to creating the public furor for the split. The bombing of the Shia mosque was part of that campaign. The Sunni militia who attacked the mosque were clearly hoping that the Shia would retaliate, thus deepening the rift.
It played out the same in Yugoslavia, before the more organized work of the militias such as the Chetniks, radicals devoted their energies to creating a sense of us vs. them. In the early days, I remember people saying it wouldn’t spread to Bosnia because they were too intermingled. Nevertheless, the people who had an interest in creating a rift were able to spread animosity within their ethnic groups which ultimately spread. By the time the war came to Kosovo, the technique had already been honed and formalized. Kosovo (I was there) was just a refinement of a process that was started a decade earlier, which looks an awful lot like what is now happening in Iraq.
I think Yugoslavia actually provides a good comparison. As in Iraq, there was a good deal of intermarriage, and under the long Tito dictatorship, there was no real avenue for the expression of highly sectarian, ethnic feeling. Tito, like Saddam, was a heavy-handed pusher of a socialist variant of secularism, backed by a cult of personality. In both cases, the disappearance of the leader opened Pandora’s box.
I agree. The reason I started this post was that it just struck me that this is how it all started in Yugoslavia, I mean the actual process. First it’s the creation of differences, committing an act that requires retribution then getting your side worked up over the retribution. Then splitting up the co-mingled neighborhoods, then the families and finally the real slaughter can start.
I guess the older you get the more this crap just repeats itself. I guess if we could be immortal we’d all go insane.