Is Iraq headed back into civil war?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

These kinds of conflicts tend to segregate the population on their own, but yeah there are still a lot of mixed areas.

Yeah, I too approve of ethnic cleansing.

Just stating a fact, douche.

Just stating the obvious premise of your 'fact', douche (the problem of this fact is shown by the words "tend to" which is not the same thing as "is")

[bgwah]

70+ killed in latest bombings

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22838865?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[CatoMinor]

Perhaps the UN should ban the UK from drawing borders ever again, with the threat of sanctions.

[LastVoter]

Perhaps the UN should ban the UK from drawing borders ever again, with the threat of sanctions.

Yes, we should have let USSR redraw the Middle East border following the Yalta conference.

[dead0man]

1,000 Iraqi Kurd soldiers desert

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[Famous Mortimer]

Perhaps the UN should ban the UK from drawing borders ever again, with the threat of sanctions.

Again. Britain carved Iraq out of a bigger country. How can you blame them for this?

[politicus]

Perhaps the UN should ban the UK from drawing borders ever again, with the threat of sanctions.

Again. Britain carved Iraq out of a bigger country. How can you blame them for this?

Dunno if one can, it was a different era after all. But one of the British WW1 promises was a Kurdish state, and creating that based on contingent Kurdish majority areas would have helped the stability of the entire region. Partitioning current Iraq in a central Sunni and a southern Shia territory would have been smart too.

[Famous Mortimer]

Kurdistan actually doesn't cause that many problems.

The problem is Sunnis and Shias living together which can't be helped.

[politicus]

Kurdistan actually doesn't cause that many problems.
The problem is Sunnis and Shias living together which can't be helped.

Not in the current situation, but we were discussing the hypotetical effect of different borders being establihed after WW1 and an independent Kurdistan (incl. the Kurdish parts of Turkey and Syria) would have avoided many conflicts in the region. A Sunni/Shia division back then would also have been benefical.

In the end an ethnic/sectarian division in a southern Shia region and a central Sunni region (incl. Baghdad) is more or less unavoidable by now. Its going to be a long and bloody road to get there, but it will be the result. So in that sense it will be "helped".

[CatoMinor]

Perhaps the UN should ban the UK from drawing borders ever again, with the threat of sanctions.

Again. Britain carved Iraq out of a bigger country. How can you blame them for this?

By not drawing the lines the way they did? There is no reason for Iraq in the present shape to have ever existed, at least not with the Sunni Arabs and Kurds lumped in.

[Famous Mortimer]

It's Mesopotamia, it's Babylon, it's a country surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates river beds that had existed numerous times over millennia.

They didn't draw the lines at random.

Either way, again, Baghdad is still going to be mixed no matter what. People will want to move to what is by far the largest city in the area. There's still going to be civil war in Baghdad.

Making the south its own country wouldn't solve anything. There isn't a civil war going one there, there's just repression by Shia militia, which would still exist (and in fact probably be worse) if the south was its own country.

The civil war is all in Baghdad, where the people live, and there isn't any way you can draw the borders to make that better.

Again, unless you advocate ethnic cleansing.

[Beet]

But the Surge guys, the Surge worked.

[bgwah]

Cities have been split before---and Baghdad has already been segregated a lot by previous violence and is probably becoming even more so now that it's back---but I don't know how feasible it would be.

Baghdad religion maps, 2003 vs 2008:





I'm guessing it's a similar story in other mixed parts of the country, but most of the national demographic maps seem outdated.

[dead0man]

But the Surge guys, the Surge worked.

It did, then we left.  Just like everybody wanted.

[tik 🪀✨]

But the Surge guys, the Surge worked.

It did, then we left.  Just like everybody wanted.

Staying would have helped sort out this problem in the long term how, exactly? I'm genuinely curious. Even if a good argument can be made I still doubt it'd've been worth it.

[politicus]

The civil war is all in Baghdad, where the people live, and there isn't any way you can draw the borders to make that better.

Again, unless you advocate ethnic cleansing.

Its not about advocating ethnic cleansing, its about predicting that ethnic cleansing - in one form or another - is what is going to happen in the long run. Hopefully most of it will be through self segregation.

[dead0man]

But the Surge guys, the Surge worked.

It did, then we left.  Just like everybody wanted.

Staying would have helped sort out this problem in the long term how, exactly? I'm genuinely curious. Even if a good argument can be made I still doubt it'd've been worth it.

It most certainly would not have been worth it.

[bgwah]

Iraq death toll 'tops 1,000' in July, highest in years

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23531834

[barfbag]

We were too headstrong from the get go in Iraq. Removal of Saddam and other dictators didn't require the full scale war we launched.

[Vosem]

But the Surge guys, the Surge worked.

It did, then we left.  Just like everybody wanted.

Staying would have helped sort out this problem in the long term how, exactly? I'm genuinely curious. Even if a good argument can be made I still doubt it'd've been worth it.

Staying in Iraq would've been a massive stabilizing influence in a collapsing region where the US still has interests to look after. But obviously there came a point where the US body politic became unwilling to spend more blood/money to stabilize Iraq, which was unfortunate but predictable.

We were too headstrong from the get go in Iraq. Removal of Saddam and other dictators didn't require the full scale war we launched.

Obviously, now that we have hindsight we know that the 2003 invasion was the single biggest mistake, by far, of post-Cold War American foreign policy, but that doesn't mean that the pullout wasn't also a mistake. The past can't be changed.

[dead0man]

I don't think it was the invasion itself that was the problem, it was how we did things immediately afterword that caused the problems.  Mainly the sticking around and disbanding the Iraqi Army.  Iraq was going to have issues once Saddam was gone.  Any place were the minority has kept the majority down for decades is going to have issues once that boot is removed from the throat.  Why we thought we could prevent that is beyond my pay grade.

[Silent Hunter]

Ultimately the only people responsible for terrorist attacks are terrorists.

[bgwah]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24190728

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Mission accomplished.

[Mr. Morden]

So….

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/04/world/middleeast/fighting-in-falluja-and-ramadi.html?_r=0