Is Iraq headed back into civil war?

[politicus]

The Syria conflict is also starting to spill over into Lebanon now.  Will we soon just have one big cluster-f*^k of a Sunni-Shiite-Alawite-Christian-Druze (and Kurdish) sectarian war stretching from Iraq to Lebanon?

That is, unfortunately, the most likely scenario.

[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.

[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".

[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.