30 Killed in Iraq Violence;
Kurds: Oil Contracts 'Unconstitutional'
Bombings and other violence left 30 dead in Iraq on Monday, and the three-day death toll is 100. Monday's strikes included a bombing of a mini-bus with students aboard in Shiite Sadr City.
In my own view,the Shiites won the battle for Baghdad and largely ethnically cleansed the city of Sunni Arabs, who I suspect are now only 10-15% of the capital's population. So this sort of terrorism is now more revenge than anything else, and it is hard to see what political change it could effect. It is just a way of keeping the pot boiling and challenging the ensconcing of the Shiite-dominated al-Maliki government.
The real danger ahead is Arab-Kurdish conflict in the north. In that regard, the building constitutional crisis between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the al-Maliki government in Baghdad over oil contracts is very bad news.
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 6/23/2009 06:10:00 AM
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1 Comments:
Re revenge, Odysseus 20 year war isn't over until he comes home, and settles scores there.
Re Arab Shiastan, a core homeland would have to include a safe corridor from the Golden Dome shrine in Sunni Samarra, thru the Baghdad road net and river bridges, which still connect important Sunni enclaves, thru the mixed southern 'triangle' belt to Najaf.
Seen from the other side, Shiites marching past/thru Sunni neighborhoods for their many pilgrimmages is like a Catholic holiday procession to an Orangeman.
A look at the population maps and the zigzag border of the Kurd provinces tells me that Eretz Kurdistan would want to do more than absorb the Kirkuk parrots beak; an ambitious man like Barzani might want to push out to the river well S. of Mosul.
Someone said that it aint over til its over. That can be a long time in mesopotamia, whatever Gates may hope for.
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