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

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (85662)	3/24/2003 12:29:03 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 281500

<lines were drawn in such a way as to create conflict in the first place> There is a 200-year-old historical trend, for national boundaries to correspond to demographic/ethnic/religious boundaries. Wherever that hasn't happened, there is conflict. Sometimes that conflict is repressed, for decades at a time, but never goes away. It just keeps coming back, and exploding into mass violence (whether organized by governments or not), until the people or the boundaries are moved. So, what probably needs to happen in Iraq, is what happened in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union: Iraq needs to split into 3 nations: Shia, Kurd, and Sunni. But, those little nations aren't really viable economic/military units, so then they need to re-aggregate, by consensus this time, into EU-type organizations. Unfortunately, this process is still in its infancy, which means that Iraq (and Turkey, which has the same problem) will remain an unstable nation, for decades to come. The implication is, the only way to hold these 3 peoples together in one nation-state, is by force. It's an artificial nation, and if the people are given a choice, that is if we establish a democracy, the first thing that will happen is, centrifugal forces tear Iraq into 3 pieces.