Bad sign on the fake state that is Iraq
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
ARTICLE: “Iraqis Planning Trench Network Around Baghdad: Big New Security Effort; Checkpoints as Cars Go In and Out--Latest Step to Stem Violence,” by Edward Wong, New York Times, 16 September 2006, p. A1.
ARTICLE: “U.S. Won’t Abandon Fight In Anbar, Commander Says: A response to a pessimistic report on conditions in a restive Iraq province,” by Thom Shanker, New York Times, 16 September 2006, p. A6.
You’re building a medieval moat-like cordon around the capital city while simultaneously promising not to abandon the restive hinterlands. This is a divide-and-salvage operation now.
Baghdad-the-capital-city is looking more and more like an orphan inside the fake state that was Iraq. The Shiite provinces speak more openly of autonomous political standing and the Kurdish state-within-a-state grows ever stronger. That leaves Baghdad-the-city-state and the Sunni portions that grow ungovernable as the leftovers.
At some point we’ll be forced to stop fighting the inevitable and start planning for what comes next. What came next in the Balkans was great--by comparison. What came next in Afghanistan and Pakistan is the same old, same old pretense of state sovereignty and coherence, when neither exist.
The Balkans are cleaning up nicely, meanwhile the ungovernable area between Afghanistan and Pakistan is ruled by the Taliban and providing Osama and Al Qaeda solid sanctuary.
We’ve won a partial victory in the northern half of Afghanistan, and our general friends continue to rule the combined city-states of Karachi and Islamabad and most surrounding territory. Meanwhile, the fight head to the hills between those two fake states, and has remained there since.
We either connect that area somehow or the game remains the same. |
