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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (44992)	9/18/2002 10:26:21 AM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 281500

As to clan, religious, and tribal divisions invalidating democracy, we have only to look at the largest democracy on earth - India - to see that those divisions aren't fatal. Iraq isn't nearly as divided as Bosnia, let alone India. And we've managed to hold Bosnia together for almost a decade without there EVER having been a national identity. Arabs and Kurds, the Arabs divided between Sunni and Shiite muslims. I'm not as pessimistic. I completely agree, Derek, much to our mutual surprise. I don't know about the specifics of Iraq, whether one can generalize all that to Iraq, but the more general comment, that democracy has survived, at least for now, in some highly unlikely places, is a terrific point.