Iraq is now partitioned. Forget it and move on.

"Nearly every night for a year, mortar and sniper fire from Islamic State group militants has pinned down outgunned Iraqi troops on the edge of Fallujah.

The city, the first to fall to the Sunni extremists a year ago this month, exemplifies the lack of progress in Iraq's war against the Islamic State group, which holds a third of the country. U.S.-led airstrikes and Iranian aid have helped Iraqi troops, militiamen and Kurdish fighters take back bits around Islamic State-held territory, but recapturing it all remains far out of reach."  UTS San Diego

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What was once the Sykes-Picot creation called the Kingdom of Iraq is dead.  It is finished.  That country was established as a European contrivance and convenience in what had always been called the Mesopotamian region centered on the Tigris and Euphrates drainage systems.   In what was traditionally called "Iraq," the British, with French political acquiescence, cobbled together a pastiche of very different ethno-religious groups and placed a princeling of the Hashemite family on a newly established throne.   Ethnic Arabs, Kurds, Turcomans, and Jews were forced into a "shotgun marriage" that suited none of them.  Sunni and Shia Muslims, Yazidi pagans, Jews, and various kinds of Christians were all told that for the first time in history they had become a new kind of human, "Iraqi Man."   

This collage of the peoples of Mesopotamia and Kurdistan limped along for almost 80 years under a variety of governments.  One of the principal functions of these governments was to maintain a coerced "unity" in this artificial state.  The endless wars between the Baghdad centered state and Kurdish separatists were emblematic of the festering dissidence that always lay just below the surface of daily life.

All this ended when the United States and its coalition of the willing invaded Iraq in 2003 and destroyed the state of Iraq and all the mechanisms of state identity and power.  The motivations for this program of destruction of the structure of the state of Iraq, have been and will be endlessly discussed.  I am weary of the debate.

What matters in January, 2015 is the simple truth that Iraq as it was is no more.  IS holds the north and west of the country with the exception of what has become a de facto country in the Kurdish "Autonomous" Region.  The Shia Arabs hold the south from their part of Baghdad all the way down to Basra.  They are likely to retain control of that territory for the simple reason that the Shia Iranians will not let it be taken from them. 

In the midst of this new reality, the United States clings to the fantasy of a re-united Iraq.  IMO this is a dangerous fantasy, and one which will continue to cost us a great deal of money.  More importantly the fantasy has lured us into a position in which we are spreading small groups of our soldiers across parts of Iraq in which Baghdad government control can only be described as tenuous.  If we continue to do that some of these soldiers, our soldiers, are going to be captured, killed or maimed in circumstances in which we will be powerless to help them.

We must be mad.  pl

 

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/jan/18/a-year-on-islamic-state-group-still-rules-iraqs/

Comments

[Thomas]

different clue,

The author reports the idea is in an incubation stage with this fledging of a democracy. The real problem as spelled out in the linked article is that they feel the US is dragging its feet on arms supplies and air strikes. I do find this man as a credible and informative journalist from Iraq.

[Thomas]

ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq-Syria, that is until they take the rest of the peninsula.

[Thomas]

Globus,

Do you think Marie Antoinette and husband were insouciant too?

[Thomas]

WRC,

"Will China or Russia intervene in MENA with armed force?"

Only if it is in their national strategic interests to do so.

[walter]

Amir, the "root cause" is Zionist, US, British meddling in Middle East or as Ron Paul says simply, "They are over here (911) because we are over there".
911 would never have happened if US had been leaving them alone over there.

[Fred]

Globus,

They were not "Saint" Hilary's policies, they were and are the Obama administration's policies.

[Charles I]

No, although Russia is sorely pissed at the Afghan drug trade and I can imagine unilateral action in that regard in the next few years.

If the ME had more arable land or agricultural potential, judging by their recently displayed appetites in Africa and South America the Chinese would be interested.

[bth]

Special article from Reuters on the weak wheat planting for 2015 occurring in ISIL territories of Iraq and Syria.
http://news.yahoo.com/special-report-islamic-state-wheat-season-sows-seeds-101623044.html

[Thomas]

A report that Caliph Ibrahim got tagged by an airstrike according to the Iraqi PM.

"Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has been wounded in an airstrike in Iraq’s northwestern town of al-Qa’im along the border with Syria, Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi told the pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper on Tuesday.

“His survival was a miracle,” said Abadi, adding that Baghdadi has since “moved to another location.”

The ISIS leader is “sometimes present in Mosul, but most of the time he’s in Syria, not Iraq,” the prime minster said.

The threat posed by ISIS has led to some countries, particularly in the West, muting their demands to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Abadi said."
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), has been wounded in an airstrike in Iraq’s northwestern town of al-Qa’im along the border with Syria, Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi told the pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper on Tuesday.

“His survival was a miracle,” said Abadi, adding that Baghdadi has since “moved to another location.”

The ISIS leader is “sometimes present in Mosul, but most of the time he’s in Syria, not Iraq,” the prime minster said.

The threat posed by ISIS has led to some countries, particularly in the West, muting their demands to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Abadi said."

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2015/01/20/ISIS-leader-wounded-and-stays-mostly-in-Syria-says-Iraqi-PM.html

He also mentions the other Ibrahim, the King of Clubs, Izzat al-Douri. I still have a feeling he is either the main man behind the Islamic State, even though he belongs to the Naqshbandi Order, or is skillfully playing them until achieving the goals of the Sunni Arab Iraqis.