generalspeaking

The Religion of Peace in a Region of Peace

U.S. President Barak Obama is making good on his election pledge to end the American presence in Iraq at the earliest possible date. Disengagement has begun, as troops are being pulled out of Iraq to take up stations in Afghanistan, relieving the pressure on vulnerably-placed Canadian, British and Dutch forces. The U.S. has hailed its military intervention in Iraq as a success, preparing now to leave the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to judiciously rule a once-Sunni-led society.

An uneasy coalition of Sunni and Shia parliamentarians have pledged themselves to the peaceful future of Iraq, despite the ongoing sectarian violence, muted somewhat from the worst years of sectarian carnage. Iraq can't wait to see the end of foreign troops on their soil, but for that small segment of the population who view that inevitability with some great degree of trepidation. Signposts of continued restlessness between Sunni and Shia are increasingly evident.

Violence is steadily on the uptick, to the extent and to a degree presenting a challenge that Iraq's police and military forces appear unable to control. From the twin (female) suicide bombings outside Baghdad's Imam Musa al-Kadhim Shiite shrine in Kadhimiyah to a series of attacks and bombings raising the two-day death toll to near 150. The purpose of the bombing is clearly to inflame tensions between the sectarian factions.

The current month has seen eighteen major attacks, straining an already divided society, raising the potential of civil war. The Iranian-backed Shi'ites are being increasingly targeted by a loose federation of Sunni militant forces; the Islamic State of Iraq. Many of the deaths were those of Iranian worshippers on pilgrimages to Iraq's holy Shi'ite sites. Causing the defensive action of closing the border between Iraq and Iran in Diyala Province where thousands of Iranians weekly pass.

Iraqis themselves are denouncing their own government's lax security, and the society-traditional, endemic corruption of the police and government officials as a good part of the problem. "They have been ruling us for 1,400 years", commented a Shi'ite soldier, harking back to the domination of Shi'ites by Sunnis in Iraq. "We took it over for four years, and they are slaughtering us."

American diplomats bemoaned the fact that soon after occupation they missed the opportunity to bring former Sunni supporters of Saddam Hussein into an alliance with Shias, at a time when their experience and expertise would have been beneficial to the process, they felt, rather than casting them out and alienating them completely.
Now the Islamic State of Iraq, the umbrella insurgent coalition, inclusive of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, celebrates the successes of their ongoing campaigns.

"Harvest of the Good" has been anything but for the Shia population of Iraq and those of neighbouring Iran, since the unbridgeable chasm of religious apartheid between Sunna and Shia appears to be hardening, with the obvious intention of the Sunni insurgents to again mount another bid for ascendancy, irrespective of the death toll. It is only with a mounting death toll and the fear and terror it inspires that they can realize success.

Inspiring the final cataclysmic civil war that will rent the nation apart, creating once again, the political, religious, social overseers and the socially and politically dislocated subordinates. At which time should the Sunni insurgents be successful, another schism in the collective society will bring Iraq neatly back to where they started, under Saddam Hussein.

All that's missing from the current picture is a charismatic and forceful figure who will maintain the status quo through brutal totalitarian rule. Saddam Hussein's plans for dominance may have been largely bluster, augmented by a strident attempt to secure world-class armaments, but his efforts will be seen as puny in comparison to those of a newly-assured and -entrenched al-Qaeda-affiliated government in Iraq.

Jihadist terrorists through their websites are highlighting a series of maps with strategic military and nuclear facilities in Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, turkey, Greece, Israel, South Africa, Pakistan and the United States. Should the current destabilization of Pakistan continue with the result that Islamists successfully establish government there, the two countries have an obvious alliance.

The United States, having launched a trajectory of chaos-filled religious and ideological re-structuring, finding themselves mired in an agony of American sacrifices accomplishing a complex holding pattern, desperately searched for an opportunity for early departure. President Obama has launched the departure date. Iraq stands poised on the brink of a vanishing governing coalition.

All the best and most hopeful aspirations in this unsettled world of fierce tribal and sectarian antipathy will avail nothing as intentions collapse into vengeance and blood-letting, allowing the fiercest, most pitilessly aggressive to sustain the winning momentum. A beefed-up U.S. forces presence in Afghanistan, more latterly identified as the real crucible, between that country and Pakistan, of the al-Qaeda/Taliban threat, may yet produce nothing substantial.

The potential for disintegration of the current, ineffectual and desperate government in Pakistan, along with the embattled government of Afghanistan, both under deadly attack by increasingly confident Taliban, augers well for the jihadists, poorly for the countries they stand poised to control. And should the world be faced in due time with a triad of fanatical Islamist countries like Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the doomsday clock moves closer to midnight.

North Korea and Iran will have reason to celebrate the success of their little clique of nuclear-availing nations, unfazed by the danger their deranged social, religious and ideological compact poses to the world at large. Triumphant, however, at the success of their defiance of Western interests, powers, politics and degenerate societies. At that time, the world and all its inhabitants can take refuge in a giant, collective tremble of comprehensive anticipation.

We needn't fret and worry however, for this is not destined to occur. It represents the bleakly evil mind of a rank purveyor of nightmares.

Labels: Middle East, Social-Cultural Deviations, Traditions

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, April 25, 2009