partition inevitable in iraq

dubya did it again. he first lied in order to launch a war that would obviously serve no purpose at all. he won the battles but could not win the war. he caught and hanged saddam, establishing his tombstone as a "milestone of history". out of a villain he made another hero. just as many muslims went into a frenzy of naming their new born sons osama in the aftermath of 9-11, an army of new borns as of 2007 will probably drift through life answering to the name saddam.

dubya also failed to gain the hearts and minds of the underdogs of the middle east and the rest of the poor world. instead, he lost the hearts and minds of "allies". the normally quite pro-american angela merkel is lukewarm despite -or maybe, because of - the backrubs dubya dons for free. even antonius blarus is also hitting the backpedal, contemplating a withdrawal of brit troops, in spite of the honeytrap promises in the new iraqi oil law empowering u.s. british and other western firms to monopolize the petroleum yield. at home, the slumbering democrats have rolled into the senate and now are hoping to sleep bush off his throne. they'll eventually succeed of course only because he must leave anyway in less than two years.

however, dubya is still piloting the world on an increasingly deepening pool of blood. now he is raising the ante in iraq by sending more troops in.

why escalate? to save the country (?!?) from falling apart? to instate peace? to stop the civil war? iraq's fate was sealed when, right after the invasion, the kurds and the shiites insinuated themselves into positions promising some control over the oil producing areas. the minority sunnite arabs who exploited their military and political superiority through the baath state apparatus were not mourning the invasion or saddam as much as they were crying over their lost access to the perks of power. with the sunnites out of the frame and instead fighting the legal government of the country, the only logical consequence emerged as the partition of iraq. in the first place, iraq's borders were artificially drawn by the british in their imperial pissing contest with france. they never did contain a nation as much as an array of competing and alternately suppressed interests which are very unlikely to compromise in the foreseeable future.

the new american troops can do little more - except get killed - than slightly postpone the inevitable partition. the central government of iraq is too plastic to command any respect or even instill awe and terror in the hearts of its own subjects, as is the custom in the middle east. they are obviously avaricious and supplicant enough to pass the oil drill bill through parliament, they will, for a time, try to control the situation with american trained soldiers, who are mainly shiite and eventually are bound to end up oppressing and exploiting their own people -especially the militant opposition of the sunnites. such blood spattered civil strife always carries the risk of giving the symbolical upper hand to the recruiters of al kaida and the like.

all that brands the nuri al malikis of iraq as incompetent to run the country. since no sunnite yet can (or needs) be appointed to top positions with any real effect, we are looking at a stalemate which again points out to partition.

however, partition is a tough cookie, too. the general intelligence indicates a tripartite iraq of kurdistan in the north under some american auspices, a shiite state in the south that is practically what the turkish republic of cyprus is to turkey, and a kind of embittered, beaten, empoverished, disillusioned, enclaved and possibly belligerent sunnite community tucked away in a remote area.

the picture looks incomplete though: first of all, the kurds and the u.s. must somehow appease turkey in order to transit smoothly into sovereignty which does not sit well with iran either. just as with turkey, kurdish independence is a thorn on the side of any possible american policy toward iran. furthermore, although they perfectly allied up in order to carve a practically autonomous kurdistan from iraq, the tribal factions within the kurdish community are still far from reconciled. the pkk, hoping to chop off a slice from turkey, is a far minor problem in the global scale, except for ankara. turkey can only in naiveté expect any dire or harsh measures against the pkk from washington which keeps it as a hole card to play against talabani's and barzani's forces in case of a mix up in northern iraq.

secondly, although they are thick as the haramis of ali baba, the arabic and arabophone shiites of iraq and the farisi shiites of iran have little in common, sociologically. this matter seems to need more analysis than a taken for granted future integration.

third, what is america going to feed the sunnites on? if assad's syria is on america's soon to be bygone list, one way at least, is to incite upheaval using the sunnite majority dominated by damascus using their iraqi brethren as leverage. since syria is as artificial as iraq, it is also as vulnerable.

all right, speculating on the course of history is no less fun than having your turkish coffee cup read by a fortune teller and i admit i, too, get carried away sometimes. yet, i promise that i never lay it out of my mind that the smears to be gawked at here, are caused by human blood.