Word: shying
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Iraq has never been a voluntary union of its peoples. Winston Churchill, as Britain's Colonial Secretary, created Iraq from the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire in 1921, installing a Sunni Arab King to rule over the Shi'ite majority and a rebellious Kurdish minority. Churchill later described Iraq's forced unity as one of his biggest mistakes. In 2003 the U.S. not only unseated the last and most brutal of Iraq's tyrants but also destroyed the institutions--notably the army and the Baath Party--that held Iraq together. The sectarian slaughter that followed the Feb. 22 bombing...
...illusion of Iraqi unity. President Bush's hopes for success in Iraq depend on two pillars: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's national-unity government and the establishment of security forces that are trusted and respected by all Iraqis. But both are shams. Al-Maliki leads a religious Shi'ite coalition that includes parties that operate the death squads that kill scores of Sunnis each day. While he says illegal militias should be disbanded, he has vigorously resisted every U.S. operation against them. The Sunnis in Iraq's government are, if anything, even more extreme. Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the Speaker...
Meanwhile, U.S. officials speak of Iraq's army and police as if they were neutral guarantors of public safety. Iraqis see them for what they are: Shi'ites or Sunnis who are active combatants in Iraq's civil war. Shi'ite police units have kidnapped, tortured and executed thousands of Sunnis since the Samarra bombing. Sunni policemen are often insurgents or sympathizers. The army, while marginally better than the police, is divided along sectarian lines and is largely ineffective. Whole battalions do not show up for combat duties they don't like. It is not possible to build a national...
...realistic option is for the U.S. to abandon the idea of creating a new, united Iraq and instead allow the country to break apart, enabling each of the country's three groups to choose its own government and provide for its own security. It is possible that Sunni and Shi'ite regions would remain together in a loose confederation, but Kurdistan's full independence is almost certainly a matter of time...
Partition is an Iraqi solution. The U.S. could help make it go more smoothly, but it mostly needs to get out of the way. The Kurds already have their region. Last month Iraq's parliament approved a law to allow the Shi'ites to merge Iraq's nine southern provinces into a single state. The one group that resists dividing Iraq is the Sunnis, some out of nostalgia for the days when they ran the country and others because they reject all that has happened since Saddam's overthrow. But with the Kurds and Shi'ites having their regions, partition...