generalspeaking

So, What's The Problem?

"We thought things were really going to be better when the Americans came, and instead they brought us only sorrow. But if they leave now there will be no Iraq."

Iraq didn't ask to be invaded. Iraq didn't want to be an occupied country. Iraqis squirmed with distaste and resentment at the sight of foreign troops on their soil. On the other hand, this was America, free and wealthy, and rigorously engaged in human rights, something sadly lacking in Iraqi society under the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein. So maybe, after all, it would turn out all right.

Iraq's Sunni minority couldn't, under this scenario, continue to dominate the Shiite majority and the Kurdish population, and that would be all right. And literate, educated Iraqis, who chafed under Saddam's totalitarian rule for far too long, would never, ever, challenge neighbouring countries for territory, nor would they ever stoop to chemical or biological atrocities against their own citizens.

But the United States, with the Coalition of the Willing limping along, did invade, did occupy, did free the country from totalitarian rule, and did impose and then encourage an Iraqi-made parliament on the fractious country. The invasion and the occupation also invited a response from the greater world of the Middle East, and in they came, flooding across the border.

Suddenly the success of the conquest and occupation was sullied by fraternal, sectarian bloodbaths as the Sunni relentlessly hunted in Shia neighbourhoods and the Shia returned the compliment as a mass slaughter ensued. Halted, in large part, by the realization that they both were fodder for al-Qaeda-in-Iraq whose superior hunting prowess was more bloodily engaged.

At last, however, the U.S. forces have departed. Every Iraqi citizen's dream fulfilled. Kind of. There are a few problems, growing pains as it were, of a new Arab-style democracy. An acute challenge: a dysfunctional coalition government; in fact an absent government in the wake of an election months ago that still has not resulted in an effective sitting parliament.

But Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is tickled pink. This being "a landmark in the Iraqi people's long hard struggle for freedom and dignity." One supposes, rationally, that people given to tribal culture that insists disagreements on the finer points of a shared religion not be amenable to discussion but choose the route of murdering one another perhaps they haven't yet located freedom and dignity.

One assumes they are now dedicated to both. And anguishing over the uncertainties the country faces with ongoing attacks by a truly ghoulish enemy; brethren in Islam whose purpose is to slaughter any Muslims who do not and will not share the depths of their fanatical ideology. The violence that the country experienced over the past 7-1/2 years caused death to 100,000 people.

"Iraq is destroyed. It doesn't have a past. It doesn't have a present, and it will not have a future." Fahim Mohammed

"If they leave of course things will get worse. But still I'm glad because the cause of all our tragedies is America." Najah Abdul Rahman

There exists within Baghdad tall cement blast walls. Erected to maintain a safe distance between Shia and Sunni neighbours, to prevent each from embarking on night time forays for the purpose of slaughtering one another in their sectarian disagreements over the correct way to worship Allah. The wall is a hindrance to normal relations and commerce, but the government is loathe to remove it for fear of renewed 'tensions'.

Funny thing, that: who among them, and in the wider Arab community of the Middle East held that wall up as an impediment against people living in harmony, and complaining about its presence to the United Nations? The wall that Israel erected to protect its citizens from ferocious suicide attacks has gained that country notoriety as an 'Apartheid' regime.

"The Americans came here and did all of this. And now they are leaving?" Ahmed Saad

Labels: Conflict, Middle East, Religion, Societal Failures, United States

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, September 01, 2010