IS ANOTHER WAR ABOUT TO BREAK OUT IN IRAQ?

….Devastation in Iraq that still stands.

 

Dick Cheney said the war in Iraq would be over in about six months.  Wrong again!

 

People that follow politics and the world’s conflicts will recall the old saying that, “For centuries, Afghanistan is the Muslim nation where Empires go to die.”  No invading empire including Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan ever conquered the tribal nation of Afghanistan.  The Soviet Union had to depart this Muslim nation without defeating it, and in the Soviets time in the country, this basically went on to bankrupt its own nation.  The USSR basically disappeared not long after they left the Muslim nation.

 

But with the United States now being involved militarily in both Muslim nations of Afghanistan and in Iraq for well over a decade, will that eventually be the same results for the US involvement in the Middle East?  It's a good question.

 

“Now that Iraq is becoming increasingly ungovernable,” said Emma Sky, who had served as a senior political adviser to the US military. “Non-state actors are stronger than the state of Iraq. The government is totally paralyzed and corrupt.”

 

The US president and the vice president had put much of their faith in the government of Iraq succeeding, mainly because of their faith in Prime Minister Haider Abadi.

 

But that optimism, along with the administration’s strategy for battling the Islamic State in Iraq, is headed down the toilet after Iraqi protesters recently stormed Iraq’s parliament.  A state-of-emergency had to be declared in all of Baghdad.

 

Now the big question for Obama and the White House officials is what happens if Prime Minister Abadi, the critical individual in the fight against the Islamic State, does not survive the turmoil that is sweeping over the Iraqi capital.

 

Because Iraqi society is so fractured along ethnic and sectarian lines, Ali Khedery, the longest serving American official on Iraq has said the U.S. administration should adopt a more decentralized approach, working directly with individual Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders. “What you have is a society that is deeply polarized between communities and even polarized within those communities,” Khedery said. “We need a radical new formula.”

 

But there is no indication that the White House is considering such a radical change in their approach.



…The man that said “The war in Iraq will be over in 6 months or less…..”

 

For now, the hope is that the current unrest in Baghdad is just a blip. The protests were sparked by the radical Shiite cleric ­Moqtada al-Sadr.  This cleric is now under pressure from Iran, where he lived during the war in Iraq, and under pressure from his fellow Shiites to rein in the demonstrations.  This is according to a senior US official.

 

Yes, it is also possible that the protests were brought on mainly by the Iraqi government’s failure to provide basic services such as clean water and electricity, and this alone could become even worse. This time however, the demonstrators only broke chairs and smashed windows in the parliament building. They also berated the Iraqi lawmakers and chanted anti-government slogans for the TV cameras.

 

But they did break through into the highly protected “Green Zone” where the US Embassy and the nation’s Parliament are located.  The Iraqi government and their military did not see that coming.

 

Is this the first sign that another Civil War could be about to break out in a nation that is already in the middle of fighting against a rebel extremist group that wants to take over the country for forming its Caliphate? 

 

If Iraq is truly “paralyzed, totally corrupt and increasingly ungovernable”, then perhaps the worst is still yet to come.

 

The reality is that the current border lines of the different middle eastern countries were drawn by two men from France and England.  The 1916 Sykes and Picot straight lines that defined the different countries might have looked fine to the European men, but those lines had nothing to do with where the Sunni’s, the Shia’s and the Kurds actually lived.

 

Therefore, if a Civil War does start in Iraq, it is almost guaranteed that all of the middle east will eventually come to war to decide just who will rule the different regions.

 

Watch this space.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016