Wall Street Journal: Iraq is moving towards separation into three states

Wall Street Journal: Iraq is moving towards separation into three states

29/03/2015 20:59

Jassim Abbas spent the past few months he slept on the floor of a mosque, which has become a refugee camp and the invaded epidemic of scabies. But he refuses to return to his hometown of Mosul, northern Iraq, even if it is released from the organization Daash someday.

Shed light on the causes of the split over Iraq, which has become it, and how it is difficult, if not impossible, to unify the country as it was before.

After more than a decade of deadly massacres that followed the US invasion in 2003, the passage, concluded that many Iraqis that the co-existence in Iraq is no longer possible, and that the country split into three states may be the only remaining alternative is viable.

Mr. Abbas, an Iraqi Shiite, may last summer fled to areas protected by Kurdish forces, and after that dominated organization Daash quickly on the predominantly Sunni city of Mosul, and the best among the Shiites to leave their doctrine and the shift to Sunni Islam or death. A few weeks later, after the Kurds fled from another attack to state regulation, Mr. Abbas fled and more than a hundred people from his neighbors and relatives to save their lives again, and finally settled among their fellow Shiites in the holy city of Karbala.

Abbas says: «There’s always going to be death threats directed against us in Mosul, we have been exposed to those threats even before the organization Daash control of the city. Our neighbors organize Daash have helped to kill us, and even did not participate in the murder did nothing to stop it, so they are their partners in this. How to live with them again. ”

The despair felt by Mr. Abbas can be seen on many of the followers of the Sunni minority who have fled their homes as well. They are part of displaced Iraqis who reproduce day after day, and who is now aged about two and a half million refugees, which is five times more than last June, according to the statistics of the United Nations.

Shiite militias have come under the pretext of fighting al Daash, but what they are trying to do really is to bring about demographic change »; Alhishmawi says Ahmed, a Sunni politician who fled from the town of Yathrib, north of Baghdad last November. He now shares a small house in a Sunni neighborhood in the capital, accompanied by 81 members of his relatives.

Abd al-Samarrai, omnipotent, Member of Parliament for the city of Samarra, the largest Sunni city located outside the control of the organization Daash he says, he says he hears daily kidnappings and executions carried out by Shiite militias that control the region tightly operations. When asked whether he would prefer Nachboh state regulation, Mr. al-Samarrai replied, “no one will be better than the hell in which they live now.”

Over the past few weeks, that the Shiite militias are trying to move into Tikrit, Samarra, an attack that now stopped because of fierce resistance. Because of the slow progress on the battlefront, the country split into three mini-states becomes a reality.

The government of the Kurdistan Region, based in the city of Erbil, already runs an independent state in everything but name, and control its own borders and limit the entry of Iraqi Arab Shiites and Sunnis. The territory controlled by the organization Daash in the Sunni belt did not maintain telephone communication with the rest of the country, has become a traveling between those areas and Baghdad almost impossible.

In the capital, the central government headed by Haider al-Abadi controls the mainly Shi’ite area, where he excels Shiite militias of religious parties at the national army, which is built by the United States, which collapsed to the advancement of state regulation.

In those three areas of the country, there is a growing feeling that coexistence is no longer possible joint, and even non grata.

Sectarian policies followed by former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in the creation of this division, and the rise of the organization Daash contributed, and that the exclusion of many Sunni Arabs and Kurds. The new prime minister, Haider Abadi, it has to adopt a more moderate tone, promising achievement of national reconciliation, and the government of more pluralistic. The holding of a deal on sharing oil revenues with the Kurds, Sunni figure and was appointed to the post of defense minister. But those moves may have been too late.

Iyad Allawi said Iraqi Vice President: «Iraq is passing through a critical phase now, either the fit of the same or will face a great disaster. This is another mile Siktah Iraq. ”

While members of the Sunni minority fled or were not killed at the hands of state regulation, remain major Sunni communities far from the original, especially in Baghdad location. There is also a dispute exists between the central government and the Kurds on the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

Nostalgia Kado, Member of Parliament for the ruling bloc, which represents the Shabak ethnic minority in Mosul, which lives mostly in refugee camps set up by the government has been warned, warned against taking any action that would accelerate the division of Iraq would have disastrous consequences unimaginable.

Mr. Qadu says: «If we decided to establish independent states, we have Angamsna in a border dispute. How we will deal with the water problem? What about gas and oil? Perhaps fighting for centuries because of these problems. ”

And went on: «We have to organize the collection offers Daash Iraqi factions together, but this is temporary and will not last. The problem in Iraq is that there is between us little in common. ”

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