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US Exit Strategy from Iraq is in some disarray.

  • 17-01-2004 3:19pm
    #1
    spongebob
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,143 ✭✭✭


    The Iraqi population is roughly as follows

    60% Shia Arabs
    20% Sunni Arabs
    20% Sunni Kurds

    Which means that the Shia Arabs can get a controlling majority in any democratic elections. The current US strategy is to cobble together abody that can cobble together a constitution and to leave before all this is sorted out....before the presidential election in November 2004.

    The Shias ...who have been quiet (compared to the Sunni Arabs) since the invasion in April 2003 ..... have dug in on the issue. They want full elections by the end of June.

    The White House see quagmire so they called Bremer in for a 'chat 'after which (according to the FT)
    After meeting President George W. Bush and other senior officials in the White House, Paul Bremer, the US governor of Iraq, sounded conciliatory. He expressed his "greatest respect" for Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani - and denied they had fundamental disagreements.

    I'll say :D . The rest of the article is Here . It looks like the US will have to remain in Iraq until a fully democratic government is in place in 2005 and not leave when they knock up an interim solution in the next few months. Absolutely everybody accepts that the circumstances are not favourable to having a full election by end june and the Shias will not accept any other solution ....nor do I disagree with them.
    An unspoken concern within the US administration is that the insurgency in the Sunni heartland could spread to the wider Sunni populace if the perception spreads that general elections would lead, for the first time in Iraqi history, to domination by the Shia majority.

    The Kurds who have been very co-operative until now, may have something to say about all this as well, them being Sunnis. The degree of antipathy between Sunni Arabs and the equally Sunni Kurds is very high and has been for years.

    As I fail to see how the US did not understand the full demographic inevitability of this 'democracy'business all along I await the inevitable Kurdish state with some trepidation .

    Nation Making is a complicated thing lads .... innit.

    M


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