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

To: epicure who wrote (114818)	9/14/2003 7:57:34 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

My sense that partition, however ugly that is, is the likely future of Iraq short of some external control--US stays because of oil interests or whatever, is built on the following. First, it is a creation of the settlements after WWI; second, it's been held together subsequently by a very strong, even brutal central government; third, the oil is in the north and the south but the country has been controlled by the Sunnis in the center which, absent a strong central government, will certainly change; fourth, it's hard to tell, but unlikely, whether there is a strong sense of national identity which overcomes regional or ethnic/religous identities; fifth, should matters progress as they are going now, there will be large incentives for the Bush administration to "declare victory and get out" which increases the centripetal pull factors without a strong centrifugal one; and sixth there must be enormous hatreds directed toward Saddam supporters by both the Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south and center. A recipe for a very, very bloody civil war.